It's not ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ but ‘Mill, Baby Mill’ (and ‘Shine, Baby, Shine’)

Seven weeks down, 205 to go, but Trump can’t change reality as renewables continue to blossom worldwide and climate action on rolls ever onwards

Welcome! Lots and lots to cover today as I go into a bunch of positive developments in the battle against climate chaos worldwide. Remember that hope powers action and action means change. Every fraction of a degree of warming stopped, matters. There is are points of action here. Let’s get started!

(Image -Rows of solar panels on a building in Somerset, UK. Author’s image.)

While the new US administration is going all in on fossil fuel and is spouting phrases such as ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ the problem they have is that the reality on the ground fails to match the rhetoric. The issue is that fossil fuels are falling behind renewables in cost, flexibility and acceptability. That does not mean fossil fuels are done, sadly waaay still too much is still being used. But there is a human revolution of technology going on where electrification and clean energy are rising and the CO2 burning fuels are becoming the fuel of yesteryear. Evidence of the decline? This from early January: "A recent oil and gas lease sale in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge got zero bids, the Interior Department announced yesterday."

Yet as Trump dampens the market for renewables in the US, other countries are seeing that as an opportunity to grab that investment cash!

Duncan Paterson, director of investor practice at the Investor Group on Climate Change, which represents Australian and New Zealand investors concerned with the financial effects of the climate crisis, agrees. “Most global investors are sticking to their climate targets because they understand the science hasn’t changed, so if the US pulls back on renewable energy, Australia looks like a better option,” Paterson says. . … “It’s a major opportunity,” [The chief executive of the Clean Energy Investor Group, Richie Merzian] says.

Want more? Check the progress of the granddaddy of fossil fuels, coal, in the US. Its use has dropped to levels last seen in the early 1960s. Coal is not coming back.

(Image: Coal us in the US over time - source)

One of the key things about the growth of renewables and the fall of fuels like coal; the connection between fossil fuel use and economic growth is now broken. One does not need the other. Take the US in 2024 for example; "That’s good news in the sense that emissions didn’t rise, even as the economy grew by an estimated 2.7%." (Source) While some may make the case for a change in our economic systems that reflect values other than growth, what this does mean is that another argument for not taking action on climate, is gone. Economic growth does not need fossil fuels.

The new US president is aiming to reverse progress, yet economic reality is going to crash into that warped aim; “But the overall trend in cost reductions is so strong that nobody, not even President Trump, will be able to halt it.” (Matthias Kimmel, head of Energy Economics at BloombergNEF, Source). This is a helluva trend to try and reverse! “The U.S. added 47% more clean energy capacity in 2024 than in 2023. 95% of capacity added in 2024 was carbon-free; solar and batteries made up 83% of new capacity.” (Source)

On this topic, the advance and growth of batteries is one of the unsung success stories of renewable technologies, which themselves are already one of the unsung success stories of technology development. Our ability to store energy, and store it at scale has allowed renewables to become more flexible and also unlocked electric vehicles (EVs) as a viable technology; both of which are shaking things up. So much so that BloombergNEF expects the cumulative doubling of energy storage in 2025!

Mill, Baby, Mill

So I got this headline from this newsletter, (and thanks to them for that!) and I like it as globally wind-power is having an amazing time. From the very big (‘China firm to build world’s most powerful ultra-large onshore wind turbine’) to the very small (‘Compact wind turbine can generate 1,500 kWh of energy per year’). The innovation in this space is exciting!

This story, of an ordinary person, a Ukrainian, making his own wind-power to deal with the energy shortages caused by war, is pretty inspiring;

“Long before renewable energy became a wartime topic, Oleksandr Klymenko embraced it as a necessity. Thus, on the outskirts of Dnipro, just over 100 kilometers from the front line, stands a wind generator of his design, its silhouette reminiscent of the Eiffel Tower.”

Here in the UK, the power regulator, Ofgem, are going to make it easier to get renewables such as wind power onto the grid;

Years of gridlock holding renewable energy projects back could be brought to an end by plans to connect new wind and solar farms to the power grid faster. Regulator Ofgem estimates the changes will roughly treble the amount of power generation added to the grid per year.

As if all that news was not cool enough; Now they are making wind turbine blades from wood.

(Image - Solar panels and wind generator in Oleksandr Klymenko's yard. Source, The Counteroffensive, recomended reading on the subject of Ukraine!)

Shine, Bay, Shine

Lets not forget solar in our discussion of renewables. In the US solar is booming in the Lone Star State, famous for oil, "Solar power is the cheapest form of energy now, even with zero subsidies. One state that realizes this is Texas, which is building more solar than any other state."

It is not just Texas, the biggest areas of growth already are Republican states in the South of America. Here’s another quote (from Heatmap’s AM newsletter);

“Xcel Energy, the largest utility in Minnesota, says it will deliver 100% carbon-free electricity to customers in the state five years ahead of the state’s 2040 deadline.”

While over in Turkey solar is also booming;

“Türkiye’s solar energy capacity doubled in 2.5 years, exceeding the 2025 target. Installations primarily for self-consumption have driven 94% of the growth since July 2022, raising capacity from 9.7 GW to over 19 GW by the end of 2024.”

Law, Baby, Law

I’ve written before about how legal cases are an interesting front of climate action. The super-simple summary of them is that some countries have enshrined rights in law (or even a requirement to stop climate chaos) and the cases argue those rights are curtailed by a lack of climate action. So in the UK recently campaigns overturned a government decision to allow a huge oil project, called Rosebank’ to continue:

“Rosebank has been ruled unlawful and the oil field’s approval has been overturned. This is a monumental victory in the fight for a liveable future for all. Thank you to all who have supported us, especially the 100,000 people who added their names in support of the court case. The government now has the chance to remake the decision after their oil & gas consultation concludes in spring. The key is to make as much noise as possible to make sure that they make the right decision to reject Rosebank.”

So first off, well done those campaigners and second it shows that this route can have victories. It all helps. Over in the US there was another recent victory:

“The supreme court has shot down the fossil fuel industry’s attempts to kill a Hawaii lawsuit, which is seeking to hold the sector accountable for an alleged decades-long misinformation campaign.The Monday decision will allow the closely watched litigation, filed by officials from Honolulu, to proceed toward a trial. It is a procedural victory for the wave of climate accountability lawsuits filed against oil and gas companies in recent years.In March 2020, the city and county of Honolulu and the Honolulu board of water supply sued oil companies for violations of state law, including for creating a public nuisance and failing to warn the public of the risks posed by their products.”

Also in the US, environmental groups have turned to the law to halt Trump’s actions (Via Heatmap AM newsletter):

“Environmental groups filed their first lawsuit against the Trump administration on Wednesday, challenging Trump’s moves to open up public lands and waters to oil and gas drilling. Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Oceana, among others, are contesting the president’s executive order revoking Joe Biden’s protections of parts of the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans from oil and gas leasing. The groups claim that the president has the authority to create these protections but not to withdraw them — a right reserved for Congress — and notes that a federal court confirmed this after Trump attempted to undo similar Obama-era protections during his first term.”

Back here in Europe; Swiss farmers are also taking their government to court over the issue of climate change:

“Farmers suing their government for failing to act on climate change might sound surprising — we’re more used to seeing convoys of tractors in the streets with farmers protesting the imposition of climate and sustainability policies. But that’s just what’s happening in Switzerland — a country where average temperature increases have already hit 2.8 °C compared with preindustrial times. In March last year, a group of farmers turned to the Swiss courts to force the government to do more to act on climate change before their farms become unviable.”

Thanks for reading and more incoming soon!

Remember - here are some points of action you can take.