RATE MY “COAL COMEBACK” 🫵
8 government announcements are being repeated in the media as evidence of a “return to coal”.
🇮🇹🇯🇵🇩🇪🇰🇷🇵🇭🇹🇭🇧🇩🇵🇰
But how consequential are they.. really?!🧵
Today on Volts: clean electrification is the most dynamic, hopeful sector of the economy, but when it comes to politics, it's a 98-lb weakling, a junior partner in trade groups dominated by fossil gas. Today's pod is about a new effort to change that. This is a spicy one!
CHART OF THE DAY: Goldman Sachs estimates that gasoline retail sales in China dropped a hefty 20% y-on-y in April (GS explains the drop by a shift toward mass transport and EV among other factors)
I knew the US imports a lot of its battery cells to make battery systems.
I did NOT know just how QUICKLY that is about to change... these numbers are huge🤯
The @IEA is now tracking electrification, in its latest update to its "2026 Energy Crisis Policy Response Tracker"👏
Do check it out!
https://t.co/Lh1CQFWUGW
My latest for Bloomberg: "We are about to see the Great Clean Energy Acceleration 2.0 – a discontinuity in energy markets as profound as the oil shocks of the 1970s, and one that could bring forward peak fossil fuel use and emissions to this side of 2030." https://t.co/857eRwNea3
Amazing chart. Energy *importers* have invested about 5x as much in renewables and nuclear as in fossil fuels since 2022. Energy *exporters* have invested about twice as much in fossil fuels as in renewables and nuclear.
BRICS broke renewable records in 2025 — & fossil records too.
Solar + wind additions hit 497GW, but the bloc also added 125GW of coal, oil & gas capacity.
A split transition: renewables are cutting coal generation in places, while fossil capacity grows.
https://t.co/OqZtOLeKsl
The world has been investing in solar, wind, nuclear, EVs and efficiency for many years now. What impact has that had on energy security?
New @IEA analysis shows that such investments over the past decade helped avoid $260 billion in oil, gas, and coal imports last year.
@IEA Coming just a few years after the energy crisis centred around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, today’s shock is set to leave a lasting imprint on future investment priorities
Energy investment in key areas rose sharply from the 2022 crisis
More ➡️ https://t.co/04LvIBzv8s
Fantastic graphic...
The world's energy importers are investing at MASSIVE scale into cleantech.
No one wants to be dependent on imported fossil fuels.
The Middle East crisis is leading countries to review their energy policies, investment priorities & strategies to improve energy security
And a key factor in these critical decisions now and in the months & years to come will be trust
New @IEA report: https://t.co/wOllPO9lGC
The Middle East crisis is leading countries to review their energy policies, investment priorities & strategies to improve energy security
And a key factor in these critical decisions now and in the months & years to come will be trust
New @IEA report: https://t.co/wOllPO9lGC
Air conditioning growth: it's pretty insane the rise in electricity demand for AC's could be more than that of data centres.
So much of the world is short of cooling.
Especially as the world heats up...