Tom Howes

European Commission official keen to advance the clean energy transition. We can move faster.

[James Murray @James_BG]

It's official: solar farms are good for birds. https://t.co/jUQy37CYXH

[Energy4Europe 🇪🇺 @Energy4Europe]

Reminder for the cold days ahead! ❄️

Turning down the thermostat by just 1 °C could save 7% of the energy used for heating.

For every degree you lower the heating, more than €70 can be cut from your annual energy bill.

More tips to #SaveEnergy ⚡️ https://t.co/9WqvyH4ovL

[Simon Evans @DrSimEvans]

NEW: Global EV sales grew 18% year-on-year in Jan 2025

Was this due to the "devastating collapse" of 21% growth in Europe?

The "stalling" 12% growth in China?

Maybe the "plunging" 22% rise in US/Canada?

Or "faltering" 50% rest-of-world growth…?

Data: Rho Motion

🤷‍♂️

[Greg Jackson @g__j]

Anyone whingeing about wind turbine recycling has another agenda...

You can't recycle oil or gas. When they're burnt, their residues are dumped in the open sewer of our 60 mile atmosphere

Even claims of (highly subsidised) oil rig recycling are ropey

https://t.co/pHbPvIeyfE)

[Lauri Myllyvirta @laurimyllyvirta]

NEW from me: Half of all China’s exports of solar and wind power equipment and electric vehicles (EVs) now go to the Global South. Emerging and developing countries have driven most of the recent growth in export volumes.

[Tom Howes @TomHowes_EU]

@DSOEntity_eu @anca_cimpeanu @CreosLuxembourg @Pauldewit01 the link is to an inaccessible draft

[Greg Jackson @g__j]

Excellent reporting from @MathisWilliam on the cost of wasted wind power. That’s 1.8bn on bills, and set to rise 4 fold.

It’s just one reason locational pricing is so important. Wind is great, but needs market reform to push bills down not up

https://t.co/wDNwuN64fQ

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

I wrote the cover story of the February issue of The Atlantic. It builds on a lot of reporting I did throughout 2024, and I'm really proud of it.

It’s called: THE ANTI-SOCIAL CENTURY

The thesis: Rising solitude is the most important social fact in American life today. The historic amounts of time that Americans spend alone and in their homes is reshaping the consumer economy—from dining to entertainment to delivery—warping our politics, alienating us from the realities of our neighbors and villages, and changing our very personalities.

Here are the basic facts:

1. In the last few years, in-person socialization has declined, for every demographic group, to its lowest point on record

2. The typical American is now alone more than in any period where we have decent data, going back to at least 1965

3. Americans now spend an extra 99 minutes in their homes compared to 2003—a trend that crept up slowly before the pandemic, before exploding and remaining at a seriously elevated level. As Princeton’s Patrick Sharkey wrote in a 2024 paper, the homebound trend isn't just about remote work. Homebound life has “risen for every subset of the population and for virtually all activities” from eating to praying.

4. America's social depression is far-reaching. The share of adults having dinner or drinks with friends on any given night has declined by more than 30% in the past 20 years. The share of boys and girls who say they meet up with friends almost daily outside school hours has declined by nearly 50%.

I don’t think these trends are simple. In many cases, they’re not even simply bad. (Ordering delivery: totally fine! Eating more meals alone, year after year after year: not so great!) But to see these trends—and their effects on American society—more clearly, I thought this phenomenon needed an anchoring, a naming, a media artifact for people to talk about, even if only to point out that I’m wrong. So, I wrote this.

[David Osmond @DavidOsmond8]

Nuclear generation isn't 100% reliable.
Analysis of European nuclear data suggests weekly fleet output during peak season can drop below 60% of average levels.
This is comparable to the effect of a bad renewable drought on wind+solar generation in Australia.
/1

[Jean-Michel Glachant @JMGlachant]

Octopus Energy software platform. Kraken, was first developed for internal use

But Octopus now licenses the tech to other energy groups internationally,

helping them manage customer billing and run solar panels, electric car chargers and heat pumps.
https://t.co/yDhkuySFr8

[Greg Jackson @g__j]

A grotesque example of how the energy system screws consumers

Worse, our bureaucratic overlords eviscerated the Demand Flexibility Service which could have reduced this. Even the rump service paid consumers 5 times less per kWh than these gas giants

https://t.co/1O78Sc2tiR

[Javier Blas @JavierBlas]

Do as I say, not as I do: The European Union imported last year more Russian LNG than ever.

[Jan Rosenow @janrosenow]

Myths and outright nonsense about heat pumps continue to get spread through traditional and social media. Read my comprehensive heat pump myth buster for @CarbonBrief

https://t.co/eQ9KKzJjqD

[FRANCE 24 Français @France24_fr]

🚕🚁 En #Chine 🇨🇳, on peut désormais commander un taxi volant électrique, sans conducteur, sur son téléphone comme on commande un #taxi classique !

📈 La demande de ces véhicules voyageant à basse altitude est de plus en plus forte

[Mark Z. Jacobson @mzjacobson]

China certifies its first all-battery-electric plane for flying, a four-seat aircraft (RX4E).

Will allow the aircraft to enter mass production.

https://t.co/COJk9wOhWl

[Tom Howes @TomHowes_EU]

5 minutes on chatGPT this morning gave me this: is it just confirming my bias thinking that flexibility should be correlated with low price peaks, with higher price troughs, and with price volatility? Can someone point me to more serious work on these relationships?

[Dan Jørgensen @DanJoergensen]

Happy to attend my first #TTE @EUCouncil #Energy as Commissioner today.

Fruitful discussions and inputs will shape our future work.

We stand committed to helping 🇺🇦 and 🇲🇩. We will continue our efforts on security of supply over the winter to strengthen 🇪🇺 energy security

[Henk Swarttouw @copenhenken]

2024 will be the warmest year on record.
~ 25% of Greenhouse Gas emissions is from transport
~ 75% of all transport emissions is from road transport
~ 2/3 of road transport emissions is from cars
~ 1/2 of all car trips is < 5 km and can easily be done by bike.
Just sayin’

[Jan Rosenow @janrosenow]

One chart, many stories. Predicted renewable energy deployment vs actual deployment.

[Lion Hirth @LionHirth]

Full disclosure: back in 2013, I didn't see this coming

I didn't see much of a role of utility scale batteries beyond frequency control