This is Not Cool

Prolonged Oil Crisis Pushing Europe Away from Gas

Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis:

Following the disruption to global energy markets caused by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the European Commission launched the REPowerEU Plan in May 2022. The strategy aims to end the EU’s dependence on imports of Russian energy by reducing energy consumption, expanding the use of renewables and securing energy supplies from alternative sources.

Between 2021 and 2024, the EU reduced its gas demand by approximately 78.5 billion cubic metres (bcm), equivalent to a 20% decline. Renewables and heat pump deployment, combined with gas demand reduction policies, were significant drivers of this decline. Between 2021 and 2024, EU households cut gas consumption by 24%, industry by 20%, commercial and public services by 19%, and electricity and heat generation by 18%.

EU heat pump deployment grew rapidly for much of the past decade, primarily in residential and commercial buildings.¹ The EU deployed around 7.6 million heat pumps over 2022–2024. France installed the most, with roughly 2 million units, followed by Italy (1.5 million) and Germany (nearly 1 million).

EU countries installed 146 gigawatts (GW) of solar photovoltaics from 2022 to 2024, led by Germany, Spain, Poland, Italy, France and the Netherlands. Utility-scale solar makes up 39% of the EU’s cumulative solar capacity, with the rest installed on rooftops, according to SolarPower Europe. EU countries installed more than 43GW of wind capacity from 2022 to 2024, led by Germany, Finland, Sweden, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland.

Company Trials Underground Nuclear in Kansas

Seems like a good place for them.
Kansas, that is.

Wall Street Journal:

No one has tried operating a commercial nuclear reactor deep underground—until now. The so-called Gravity Reactor is the creation of Liz Muller and her father, Richard Muller, emeritus professor of physics at University of California, Berkeley and an inventor. They founded Deep Fission, a three-year-old California startup that has raised around $150 million in the past year, including $40 million last month through an initial public offering, largely to fund the work in Parsons.

Parsons, with a population of 9,600, sits about midway between Kansas City and Tulsa, Okla. Deep Fission drilled a first test hole this spring on 100 acres at a mostly overgrown industrial park dotted with old munitions bunkers just outside town.

Deep Fission’s is using a common, scaled-down, reactor design; its innovation is putting it underground.

The key to the plan is avoiding the need for hulking containment buildings. Instead, the mile-deep hole will provide the necessary pressure, cooling and containment. A single reactor will generate just 15 megawatts, enough to power about 12,000 homes, but Muller envisions an array of 100 or more, providing more than a gigawatt, enough for a data center. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would oversee approval of commercial licensing, needed to sell electricity.

Cha-Charging Sounds like Cha-Ching to Walmart

Like my Uncle Jim used to say, “nothing happens until the cash register rings.”

Cha-ching, cha-ching.

Bloomberg:

Since the start of the year, four high-speed charging stations have opened in Bentonville, Arkansas, even though the state has been a laggard in transitioning to electric vehicles.

Bentonville, however, is Walmart Inc. country and these are Walmart chargers — three at stores near the company’s headquarters and one at the airport.

In a matter of months, Walmart has become a major player in the burgeoning business of quickly fueling electric vehicles, speeding past Costco as well as more established charging companies with its in-house network of electron pumps. Walmart has hosted chargers from brands like Electrify America since 2018. But now the company is building its own network — and quickly. As of March of last year, every EV station at a Walmart is under the company brand.

While the blitz of infrastructure will fuel in-store sales, it will also redraw the American charging map, making public electrons cheaper and easier to find.

“They’re steamrolling,” said Bill Ferro, cofounder of Paren, a charging consultancy. “It’s the right time to do this and they’ve got the right locations.”
Walmart, meanwhile, isn’t alone in its play for EV pilots. If anything, it’s a little late to the game. Target Corp. has 150 high-speed charging stations spread around its US stores, according to Paren, while Costco Wholesale Corp. is selling electrons in 42 of its lots. Home Depot Inc. and Lowe’s Companies Inc. have 101 stations between them.

Shiri Levi-Laor, chief executive officer of Driivz Inc., a consultancy, says adjacent charging generally increases a store’s sales by 5%. By 2030, she estimates one in five fast-charging stations in the US will be in the parking lot of a big-box retailer.
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More evidence of the transition happening despite furious resistance and sabotage by the administration.

Quantum Batteries Could be Weird in a Good Way

Lab curiosity for now. But wait a few femtoseconds.

We might get this before we get fusion reactors.

James Quach in The Conversation:

You’re late for an important appointment. Just as you are leaving your house, you realise your phone is flat.

Imagine you could charge it almost instantly by exploiting the strange rules of quantum physics. That’s the promise of quantum batteries.

My colleagues and I at CSIRO have developed the world’s first quantum battery prototypes – and the direction the technology has taken is surprising.

You may have heard of the peculiar quantum effects of superposition and entanglement, which allow mostly very tiny objects to behave very strangely. They could also allow quantum computers to solve problems conventional computers cannot.

One strange feature of the quantum world is what are called “collective effects”. They are what give quantum batteries their unique properties.

Under the right circumstances, the storage units of quantum batteries don’t act individually, but behave collectively. In a counterintuitive twist, this means the units charge faster together than if they were charging alone.

Let’s say your quantum battery has N storage units, and each unit takes one second to charge. Collective effects mean that if all units are charged at once, each unit will take only 1∕√N seconds to charge.

This means that the bigger your quantum battery, the less time it takes to charge. If it doubles in size, charging will take just a little more than half as long.

It is as if each unit somehow knows there are other units around, and their presence makes the unit charge faster. Strange, right?

This is radically different from how conventional batteries work, where bigger batteries typically take longer to charge. That’s why it might take an hour to charge your mobile phone, but your electric car needs all night.

UK Intel Assessment Warns of Ecological Collapse

Seem like things are coming at us fast? Are systems breaking faster than we thought?
You’re not the only one that’s worried about it.

Novara Media:

Britain faces a national security crisis within just a few years due to the impending collapse of global ecosystems, spy chiefs have warned, but the government is refusing to publish their report in full.

A redacted 14-page document warns of severe food shortages, which could begin within five years, along with price rises, political destabilisation and the possible outbreak of war as countries compete for dwindling resources.

Crop failures, disease outbreaks and intensifying natural disasters could cause “geopolitical instability, economic insecurity, conflict, migration and increased inter-state competition for resources”, it said.

The joint intelligence committee, which oversees M15 and MI6, was responsible for the report, the Guardian reported. Members of parliament are demanding it be published in full.

Guardian:

The report by the joint intelligence committee and other government departments, revealed by the Guardian last October, shows that the UK will face catastrophic consequences from the collapse of key ecosystems in other countries. These include the Amazon rainforest, which scientists fear is reaching a “tipping point” triggered by deforestation and rising temperatures, which would turn the ecosystem from a huge absorber of carbon dioxide into a net source of carbon.

Paul Krugman on Global Fires

“They hate science.”
Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman gives some context weaving together the ongoing climatically disastrous summer, the humiliation in Iran, the revulsion against Public Health, and the aversion to the very idea of Objective Reality.

Oncoming Gorilla El Niño suggests that Objective Reality may not wait around for acceptance.

Music Break: AJR – The Making of a Hundred Bad Days

“A Hundred Bad Days Make a Hundred good stories.
A hundred Good stories make me interesting at parties”

“No I ain’t scared of you.”

How DOGE Cuts Sabotaged Fire Management in Minnesota

Above, local Minneapolis TV report on the continuing fires in Northern Minnesota, includes an appearance by friend-of-the-blog John Abraham, of St. Thomas University.

Below, new reporting from The Washington Post puts a finger on some specific DOGE cuts that crippled the very forest management practices that climate denying congress people have been arm waving about and blaming for the fires.

Washington Post:

Last year, the Trump administration delayed a $10 million grant that was supposed to help Minnesota thin out about 4,000 acres of dense, dry forest at high risk of burning. Most of that work never got started, according to five people familiar with the situation and a document reviewed by The Washington Post. And now, some of those areas are on fire.

In 2024, as part of a $100 million initiative to tackle the nation’s wildfires, the Biden administration awarded the Superior National Forest — where about two dozen lightning-sparked fires have been burning since early July — $10 million for projects that would have removed decades of dead trees and undergrowth, creating breaks in potential fire fuel around critical corridors and remote homes. The funding would have also paid for fire prevention efforts along a key 36-mile gravel road known as the Echo Trail — months before the ongoing Sioux Fire jumped it, threatening residences.

“Unprecedented” Fires Explode Across Europe – Spain Declares National Emergency

Republicans can take great satisfaction in a job well done.

This is what “winning” looks like, I guess.

Frankreich: Tiere flüchten aus brennendem Wald! #politik #protest #klima #umwelt #Frankreich Original auf: pic.twitter.com/cZAVE4MLvy
— Kristjan Knall (@Kristjan_Knall) July 25, 2026

Renewables, Batteries, More than Meeting Texas Record Demand

Following the disastrous failure of thermal generation, mostly gas, during the Valentine’s Day freeze of 2021, Texas has massively increased buildout of solar, and batteries, as well as wind energy, with some modest gas as well.
Now the formerly brittle grid is robustly meeting record demand with plenty of overhead to spare, thanks to clean energy.

Doug Lewin on X:

Air conditioning demand in extreme Texas heat pushed the ERCOT grid beyond 91 gigawatts today. Before yesterday, we had never exceeded 86 GW so this record shatters the old one. Note there was >20 GW of buffer, no energy emergency, no conservation call.