We interrupt the madness for a note from the rational world

And an encouraging one, at that!

Let us stipulate that President Trump’s spiraling descent into madness is, and should be, our main preoccupation. His attempt to coerce Europe into handing him Greenland in place of a Nobel Prize has, for the moment, been thwarted, but it will be back soon; meanwhile, he and his goons continue trying to goad the good people of Minneapolis into violence that they can use to justify some deeper form of martial law. (This week they’re kidnapping five year olds). So far it’s not working—I’m watching in awe as the residents of the Twin Cities write a new chapter in the long history of peaceful resistance. Seventy years after the Montgomery bus boycott and 95 years after the salt march, they’re showing themselves the (cold-weather) equals of King and Gandhi. How can you help? See below

Anyway I’m spending most of my time on those topics: Third Act is doing all we can think of to oppose the ongoing assault on our democracy. But it’s always worth remembering that in the background the great story of our time—the planet’s steeply rising temperature—grinds on. And so too the one serious counteroffensive: the accelerating turn to clean renewable energy. I’ve long thought that the most important piece in that puzzle would turn out to be India, the largest country on our planet. As I said way back in 2019:

India is the most interesting country right now because, in energy terms, it’s about where China was 15 years ago. The question is whether it’s going to go through its own coal phase or make the leapfrog. I think even two or three years ago I would have said pessimistically that it was going to go through its coal phase head on. But the costs have changed so fast.

I have a feeling I was crossing my fingers when I said that, but as it turns out my intuition was right. A new report this morning from the European think tank Ember attempts to get at precisely my point: can India start to jump past fossil fuels straight to renewables. Almost certainly so!

It indeed shows India—at the same GDP per capita as China in 2011—taking a very different tack in its energy development, with coal use plateauing, and solar power taking off.

There are several reasons for this, but the most important by far is that when China was at a similar stage of development coal was cheap and solar and wind were still expensive. Now that’s flipped—indeed, it’s actually cheaper to build a new solar farm in India than to simply keep buying the coal for an existing coal-fired power plant. Think about that for a minute.

And then think about the fact that India currently spends five percent of its GDP importing fossil fuels—that’s a lot of money. Oh, and you’re deeply exposed to price shocks. Oh, and what if Donald Trump decides he doesn’t like you because you’re not white and cuts off your supply. The sun is not just cheap, it’s dependable.

If this continues—if it accelerates—then India has a real chance to clean up the foul air in its cities. China did, after all—fifteen years ago you couldn’t see across the street in Beijing, and now…you can. Here’s Sam Matey-Coste reporting yesterday, on what he described as a “beautiful winter morning, not a cloud in the bright blue sky”:

China has seen a massive decrease in air pollution since 2013. Deadly particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution has declined by 41% in China as a whole between 2013 and 2022, which if sustained statistically gives the average Chinese resident an extra 2 years of life. In particular, Beijing experienced a 54.1% decline in pollution in just nine years, which if sustained equates to the average Beijing resident living 3.9 years longer!

And India isn’t just buying Chinese solar technology, they’re increasingly building it themselves. Indeed, in many ways they’re better positioned than Beijing to make the transition into an electro-state because there’s so much less to transition

As China faces the painful task of writing down its coal fleet, India can emerge with far fewer scars.

Overall, India is on a very different development pathway from China, industrialising on modern renewables, put to work through electrification. Leaning into this offers multiple advantages: manufacturing opportunities, energy sovereignty and faster scaling of electricity supply. As the fastest-growing major economy and the world’s most populous nation, India’s choices carry powerful demonstration effects. It is showing other emerging economies that electrotech can power industrial growth, not just follow it.

I don’t want to sugarcoat this, because there’s much to dislike about India. Narendra Modi is a chauvinist like Trump in many ways, using Hinduism to divide his country. And he hates dissent: just a few years ago the government forbade India’s leading youth climate activist from traveling overseas, and charged her with sedition. (This kind of thing continues.) But India is not rich enough to indulge itself in Trumpian fantasy, and Modi was somewhat chastened in his last election. Though his government has close ties to the coal lobby and has announced plans to build a hundred gigawatts more of coal-fired power in the next decade, that seems increasingly unlikely. In fact, just the opposite is happening. Ember estimates that by 2031, over a third of India’s installed coal capacity could be operating at under 40% utilisation, undermining the economic case for building more. You don’t have to pay people to go mine the sun. Bottom line, according to Ember:

In all likelihood, India will reach $20,000 GDP per capita without coal generation ever exceeding the levels China was burning at $5,000.

As I said last week, if Gandhi were alive today he’d be putting up solar panels.

And bottom line: if Europe and China and India are all headed towards renewables, where does that leave America? It leaves it as a flailing state, whose leaders try to intimidate reason. The head of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, walked out of the Davos session where the commerce secretary urged Europe to return to burning coal. And here’s our president in Davos trying to talk about energy, to a room full of leaders every last one of whom knows he is lying

‘China makes almost all of the windmills, and yet I haven’t been able to find any windfarms in China. Did you ever think of that? It’s a good way of looking. You know, they’re smart. China is very smart. They make them. They sell them for a fortune. They sell them to the stupid people that buy them, but they don’t use them themselves.’

As the Guardian restrainedly explained, “This claim is incorrect. China has more wind capacity than any other country and twice as much capacity under construction as the rest of the world combined.”

And not only that—China doesn’t make almost all of the windmills. The latest data I can find is from 2022, but as of that year Ørsted was the world’s biggest supplier of offshore wind farms. And Ørsted is headquartered in…Denmark. Remember them?

In other energy and climate news:

+Oof. A new study in Nature shows that droughts in the Amazon are becoming more common, and that they are giving us glimpses into what the authors call a “hypertropical future.”

Under a hypertropical climate, temperature and moisture conditions during typical dry season months will more frequently exceed identified drought mortality thresholds, elevating the risk of forest dieback. Present-day hot droughts are harbingers of this emerging climate, offering a window for studying tropical forests under expected extreme future conditions

We want to avoid this at all costs—the Amazon, along with the Arctic and the Antarctic, are non-negotiable parts of a working climate system.

+If Europeans are wondering how they can get out from under the thumb of Donald Trump, the answer is: build your own power supply. A new analysis shows that after the Ukraine invasion countries turned away from Putin and towards Biden for their natural gas, only to find Biden replaced with Putin’s best bud.

In part due to the war in Ukraine and the imposition of sanctions on Russian pipeline gas, European countries have become dependent on shipments of US liquified natural gas (LNG), according to a paper co-authored by the Clingendael Institute, in The Hague, the Ecologic Institute, in Berlin, and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

The development is fraught with risk at a time when Trump has shifted “towards a more explicitly interest-driven, protectionist and ideologically charged approach”, the paper says.

The US president has most recently threatened to use tariffs on trade with European allies in order get their agreement on his acquisition of Greenland, which is part of Denmark, an EU member state and Nato ally.

Trump’s controversial national security strategy paper published in November explicitly stated that the White House was seeking US energy dominance, which “when and where necessary – enables us to project power”.

+Big flooding in New Zealand, driven by record ocean heat. And much worse in Mozambique, where the death toll is already above a hundred souls.

The National Disasters Management Institute (INGD) said more than 645,000 people have been affected since the start of the rainy season, with 91,310 currently sheltering in 68 active accommodation centres.

A further 99 people have been injured and thousands of homes, classrooms and health units have been damaged or destroyed.

INGD deputy chairperson Gabriel Monteiro said the scale of rainfall – up to 250 millimetres in 24 hours – overwhelmed infrastructure and exceeded forecasts.

He blamed a tropical depression from the Indian Ocean and water surges from neighbouring countries’ dam releases for worsening the crisis.

More than 3,000 kilometres of roads are impassable, and the start of the school year may be delayed in flood-hit provinces.

Mozambique, just for reference, is one of the ten poorest countries on earth, and the average resident produces about 1/42nd as much co2 as the average American.

+The Amish—who are America’s most sophisticated users of technology, judging each innovation by whether or not it helps the community—seem to be breaking hard for e-bikes. This fine article in the car magazine Jalopnik quotes an old friend of mine

David Kline, the bishop of an Old Order church near Mount Hope, Ohio, explains that it’s not technology itself that the Amish are opposed to, but the destructive effects they believe it would have on their communities. As he told Forbes:

“We’re fairly open to technology. We use modern medicine. We go to the dentist. We donate blood. The car was really the first piece of technology that the Amish said: ‘Whoa. What will it do to the community?’ And as we know, Henry Ford’s Model T destroyed thousands of small communities.”

That’s why the Amish horse and buggy is still a common sight in some rural areas. But as Kline says, they don’t shun technology entirely, contrary to the stereotype. Some work for modern businesses in roles that align with their beliefs. For example, Janus Motorcycles employs Amish craftsmen to build frames and gas tanks. So does Keim Lumber in Charm, Ohio, where hundreds of e-bikes plug in to recharge while their owners work inside, reports Ideastream Public Media:

Abe Troyer is Amish. He works at Keim Lumber as the executive director of sales. He said his eBike gives him more time with family because his commute is 45 minutes shorter.

“[It’s] basically 10 miles a day, but I do a lot more than just work,” Troyer added. “I go different places at different times. So, in the last year and a half, I put 3,400 miles on my bike.”

Somewhat less compelling: the Indian Defense Review (for some reason) reports on the next generation of induction cooktops for the really rich. Apparently they’re buried in stone countertops and you can’t even tell

A kitchen counter that doubles as a stove. No visible burners, no glass cooktop, no demarcation. Just a slab of stone that heats when a pot touches down and cools when it’s lifted. This is not a prototype. It is being sold, installed and increasingly adopted in newly built or renovated kitchens across Europe and North America.

+Thanks to Nature for a roundup of just how much damage Donald Trump managed to do to American science in the course of a year.

More than 7,800 research grants terminated or frozen. Some 25,000 scientists and personnel gone from agencies that oversee research. Proposed budget cuts of 35% — amounting to US$32 billion.

These are just a few of the ways in which Donald Trump has downsized and disrupted US science since returning to the White House last January. As his administration seeks to reshape US research and development, it has substantially scaled back and restricted what science the country pursues and the workforce that runs the federal scientific enterprise.

+Tell me this isn’t cool. New window glass not only generates electricity, it also darkens in the sun to cool homes.

Peidong Yang reports in Nature Materials that his team has created a cesium-based perovskite solar window that turns opaque and produces electricity when heated, but without methylamine. That allows the windows to switch back and forth repeatedly without a drop in performance. "It's an attractive idea that you would have the solar cell capability and the smart window at the same time," says Michael McGehee, a materials scientist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who studies both perovskite solar cells and smart windows.

+A big new report from the reliable folks at Carbon Tracker indicates that Brazil could save a quarter trillion dollars in fuel costs, and $75 billion in climate damages, by switching to EVs.

Brazil is well positioned to lead the EV transition, with a low-carbon electricity grid, abundant battery mineral resources, and a strong domestic automotive industry. Electricity is already significantly cheaper than petrol, making EVs cost-competitive for consumers – and consumer demand for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is expected to soar as fuel savings are realised. Brazil’s adoption of flex-fuel (a mix of ethanol and petrol) over the past decades has lowered oil imports but not eliminated fossil fuel dependence in transport; electrification remains the best path to long-term energy security, lower costs, and full decarbonisation.

+The indomitable Antonia Juhasz makes an excellent case that though the tv show Landsman is an unconcealed attempt at fossil fuel propaganda, it also shows the deeply unsafe reality of oil production.

As “Landman” unfolds, a slew of gruesome oil field deaths mount from fiery explosions, stacks of loose pipes, hydrogen sulfide poisoning and suicide. Incidents like these are detangled by Tommy Norris (Thornton), a grizzled, bitter, chain-smoking oil fixer. He spends a good deal of the show cleaning up oil field disasters or trying to persuade those he loves and cares about the most, including his son, to run from a business that is likely to kill them. The job, he says, has left him “a divorced alcoholic with $500,000 in debt, and I’m one of the lucky ones.”

+Update on one of my fave statistics: a boatload of solar panels is no longer worth 100 boatloads of coal. Now it’s 120, not to mention 57 of LNG. If you’d like that in graphic form:

+Much kerfluffle in the battery world over a new solid-state model from a company called Donut Lab that—well, let Fred Lambert explain

Donut Lab lit the EV and energy storage industry on fire last week with its announcement of a 400 Wh/kg solid-state battery cell that can last for 100 years. At face value, if true, we are looking at the single most disruptive announcement in the history of the electric vehicle industry and energy storage as a whole.

We aren’t just talking about a better motorcycle battery. If the claims of a 5-minute charge, 100,000-cycle life, and ~400 Wh/kg energy density are accurate and scalable, as Donut Lab claims, this is the holy grail of energy storage.

Now, we have interviewed Donut Lab’s CEO and investigated the technology. At this point, it looks like either this battery changes the world within the next 3 months, or it will make the CEO look like a fool.

If this is real, the internal combustion engine didn’t just die today; it was buried 100 feet deep, and every other battery is not far behind. But, and this is a massive “but”, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and Donut Lab has yet to release that proof.

I promise I’ll report back when more is known.

+We’re getting the numbers on the damage that Trumpism is doing to electricity prices. From the Guardian

The average household electricity bill in the US was 6.7% more expensive in 2025 compared with the previous year, according to a Guardian analysis of data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the Department of Energy’s statistical arm. The increases meant that, on average, US households paid nearly $116 more across 2025 than they did in 2024.

Remember, electric bills will be to the ‘26 elections what eggs were last time round.

+Gotta close with some more good news from the real world. India is earth’s most populous country, but Nigeria holds the honor for the African continent, and it’s the planet’s sixth-biggest nation . And it’s seeing its own massive solar boom. As Emele Onu and Antony Sguazzin report:

When night falls in Akanu in southeast Nigeria, the streets are lit. That’s something people in the rural settlement of 100,000 haven’t seen since 2020, when access to the national grid in the area broke down and was never repaired.

For Mercy Kalu, who runs a roadside restaurant, shop and bar, business is booming. “Our people go to bed early, like fowl, when there is no light,” she says. Now “people go to their farms in the day and come here in the night to pick up their soap, cream, sachet water and soft drinks. What I used to sell in a week, I can sell in three days.”

After decades of having to retire at dusk or rely on noisy, smelly and expensive diesel generators, local communities are able to take the energy supply into their own hands, thanks to the availability of cheap solar panels and battery storage.

This change is truly remarkable. Nigeria’s pitiful grid, mostly based on natural gas, only supplies four gigawatts of electricity; its huge fleet of small diesel generators, which every shopowner needs, produces 75 gigawatts, but it’s expensive, unreliable, and dangerous.

Husk Power Systems is the world’s biggest operator of solar minigrids, which harness the sun to power small communities that either are not connected to the grid or rely on erratic state power supply. The company runs about 70 such systems across Nigeria and is raising $400 million to expand there as well as in India. “When we stepped into a village, we could smell a waft of diesel hanging in the air,” recalls Manoj Sinha, Husk’s co-founder and chief executive officer. Now you “can drink chilled beer after a hot afternoon, you can process rice that doesn’t smell like diesel when it’s heated.”