I took the month of August off from writing ProElectrica pieces for a northern summer holiday down under. It was wonderful to be in Australia, not only for the outback adventure, but to see a country where electricity costs are coming down for consumers and wholesalers alike. This, because of the abundant renewables and especially battery uptake in that country.
I come back to America, during a week that has seen record temperatures in my home state and when oil has just hit $109 a barrel. This means about $4.20 a gallon at the pump for most Americans, much more here in California. I am fortunately preserved from it because I took possession of a Lightfoot over the summer. See the photo.
This wonderful chariot, largely runs off sunlight direct and doesn’t even need to be plugged into my circuits to benefit from the solar electricity spilling from my roof. To get around town, if less than about 20 km a day, that glowing orb above is more than I need.
THE GOOD NEWS?
What’s the good news, you might ask? Well, checking in on the mid-year data flow that comes around this time, we can see that renewables had a setback of a sort at the start of the year with Trump’s wars and China’s policy changes.
But really, it’s plateaued at worst, and in fact, has achieved some new important records, like the co-investment of batteries, with wind and solar project developments globally.
In America itself, renewable generation was up 10% year on year for the first half of ‘26 over H1 2025. And even though the war for oil has continued to expand, as we foreshadowed it might, the drivers of demand for that oil are rapidly declining.
RENEWABLE ELECTRIFICATION ACCELERATING
Indeed, you don’t need to have a Lightfoot to make an impact on this equation, as the world now has 280 million electric 2- and 3-wheel vehicles, which are cutting a lot more oil demand than four wheel vehicle electrification trends: 4 times as much according to some studies due to the staggering uptake in Asia in particular. It’s economic for these places because a 20 km a day electric ride, 5 days a week would cost about $20 annually. If you were doing it with an ice vehicle of any size you’d spend a lot more!
As well as the electrification of urban transport booming, the supply side of renewable electricity supply and all manner of EVs has also been growing greatly.
As Reuters reports, this is largely spurred by the US-Iran War - possibly one of the greater ironies of history. BYD told investors they were limited to a mere 100% growth in exports this year due to shipping availability. They have guided the street to expect up to 2 million exported this year and to exceed 2.5 next.
That would mean one Chinese car company - next year - would be exporting the equivalent of 15% of the entire U.S. new car market. And according to friends at the University of Exeter and the EarthShot Prize, tipping points might well be coming in a positive sense of that word, which was an encouraging read to come home to. All is not lost.
CHALLENGES REMAIN
Of course, challenges remain. All summer, coal has come back in places due to new electricity demand growth while gas in particular has been constrained through the Straits of Hormuz. And the growth of energy demand from data centers, as is much discussed in the United States, and also from air conditioners - as are much needed from Europe to Asia as evidenced by the heat wave this summer - is going to continue to challenge the growth in renewables to do much more to keep fossil fuels at bay. We are barely covering the growth in demand and not cutting into the base of demand to burn fuels.
My conclusion coming off this summer break is that the struggle continues. I knew that it would, as it is ever thus. In discussions with partners at FutureKeepers we’ve decided to try to bring you more colour from the front lines of that struggle with new voices speaking their ProElectrica piece. And we’re going to introduce a podcast called “Meet me on the Solar Coaster” that hopefully will entertain. We’ll be featuring voices from Asia in particular, where the battle for the atmosphere will be won or lost, and where real champions are emerging that don’t get much of the limelight.
As well, we’ll try to take on some of the topics that are preoccupying people, including the much debated artificial insanity. Soon we’ll look at new power politics with our electrotech electrifying everything including thinking, leading to hyperintelligence and how it will affect energy demand for good and for bad (AI is an enabling software set for the distributed energy utility solutions that ProElectrica believes are needed to displace coal, oil, nukes and gas fully. It is also replete with other real risks, as we know well from the mainstream press). More on that and the podcast soon. Please give me your thoughts and let me know what you’d like me to write about in ProElectrica.
Shine on.
omg this picture of you and Sam brings me such joy! I'm excited to hear more about the good work happening across Asia via your podcast. The US doomscroll can sometimes get in the way of remembering there's a lot of progress happening. As you were noting in this piece re: costs coming down as oil and gas goes up I also can't help but wonder about your take on the whole affordability conversation that is being framed up in the US. It seems like many in the US climate space are increasingly pushing affordability as the key message but that feels risky to me - in part because it then allows us to ignore the structural and systemic elements getting in the way of rapid adoption and puts this back into a consumer framework. that's my back-of-the-envelope thinking anyway, and I'd love to hear your thoughts given what you're seeing globally.