Hey everyone, welcome to FutureProof - my Tech and Sustainability Digest.
Another week has flown by, OpenAI launched its hugely anticipated GPT 5 only to have everyone go - Nooooooooooo!!!! In other news, Scotland got approval for a huge offshore wind farm, and a new Airbus satellite launched to monitor climate change (see below).
And as always this newsletter is dedicated to surfacing and sharing good news stories across tech and sustainability. If good news sounds like something you need, read on. And please share this newsletter with anyone/everyone else you feel could do with a little cheering up!
Climate
Europe’s New Space Sentinel Is Watching the Climate (and It’s Gorgeous)
Move over, weather apps - Europe just lobbed a €billion-class eye into orbit to supercharge climate and weather predictions for the next 20 years. Built in Stevenage by Airbus and launched from French Guiana, the MetOp-SG A1 satellite will beam down data so detailed, you might finally get a barbecue forecast you can trust.
Key Highlights:
First of six next-gen climate and weather satellites, jointly built by Airbus in the UK, France, and Germany.
Dual-pair system: atmospheric sounding, imaging, microwave sensing, and radar all in one orbital package.
Eco-friendly deorbit system to send satellites to a watery grave when their mission ends, reducing space junk.
Why This Matters: Accurate climate and weather data isn’t just about avoiding soggy picnics, it’s essential for disaster preparedness, farming, shipping, and keeping infrastructure resilient in an era of increasingly chaotic weather.
Kismet: MetOp-SG’s deorbit tech is so neat that, if every defunct satellite used it, we could slash the risk of space debris collisions, meaning fewer chances of a real-life “Gravity” sequel. 👉 Full story here
AI News
AI Is Now Birdwatching, Whale Listening, and Coral Reef DJing, All to Save the Planet
DeepMind’s Perch AI just levelled up, it’s now better at picking out endangered species’ voices from the planet’s noisiest playlists, from Hawaiian honeycreepers to coral reef clicks. Translation: less time sifting through terabytes of frog gossip, more time actually protecting the creatures making it.
Key Highlights:
New Perch model trained on twice the data, spanning birds, mammals, amphibians, and even human-made noise.
Already helped discover a hidden population of the critically endangered Plains Wanderer and sped up honeycreeper monitoring 50x.
Open-sourced on Kaggle, with tools that let scientists train custom species detectors in under an hour.
Why This Matters: This isn’t just AI listening to nature, it’s turning nature’s chatter into hard data that could mean the difference between “endangered” and “extinct.”
Kismet: The same tech spotting rare bird calls in the Outback can also pick up juvenile fish sounds on coral reefs, basically giving marine biologists a baby monitor for the ocean. 👉 Full story here
AI Now Predicts Where Any Protein Hangs Out in Your Cells, No Lab Coat Required
MIT, Harvard, and Broad Institute researchers have built an AI model called PUPS that can pinpoint where virtually any protein lives inside a single human cell, even ones it’s never seen before. That means faster insights into diseases like Alzheimer’s and cancer, without months of pipetting and microscope squinting.
Key Highlights:
PUPS combines a protein language model and a computer vision “image inpainting” model to predict protein location at single-cell resolution.
Works on proteins and cell lines the model hasn’t been trained on, a leap beyond current approaches tied to existing datasets.
Could help diagnose disease, find new drug targets, and understand protein mutations more quickly.
Why This Matters: By mapping proteins without wet-lab delays, PUPS could slash the time between scientific hunch and medical breakthrough.
Kismet: The Human Protein Atlas has mapped just 0.25% of all possible protein–cell combinations, meaning 99.75% of the “cellular postcode map” is still uncharted territory for PUPS to explore. 👉 Full story here
GPT-5’s Bumpy Lift-Off: From “Most Anticipated Ever” to Patch Frenzy
OpenAI’s GPT-5 launch was supposed to be the crown jewel of AI, instead, it landed with chart crimes, coding flops, and users begging for 4o back. Now, after a whirlwind of fixes, GPT-5 is learning on the job, proving even the smartest machines can have rookie seasons.
Key Highlights:
Post-launch chaos led to doubled message limits for Plus users and the option to bring back legacy model 4o.
New UI tweaks show which model is replying, and fixes have been made to the “autoswitcher” that was making GPT-5 “seem way dumber.”
Altman admits the rollout exposed major UX lessons, from emoji preferences to GPU supply trade-offs.
Why This Matters: GPT-5’s rocky debut underscores how even cutting-edge AI depends on careful rollout, clear communication, and yes, human patience.
Kismet: That infamous “chart crime” wasn’t just embarrassing, it spawned a meme so viral that data-viz experts are now using it in lectures as a what-not-to-do case study. 👉 Full story here
Run ChatGPT-Style AI on Your Mac — Free, Private, and Offline
OpenAI’s new gpt-oss-20b model means you can now run ChatGPT-style AI entirely on your Mac - no subscription, no internet, no prying eyes. It’s not as lightning-fast as GPT-4o in the cloud, but for private writing, coding, and tinkering, it’s a game-changer.
Key Highlights:
gpt-oss-20b runs locally on Macs with 16GB+ RAM using free tools like LM Studio or Ollama.
Works offline for writing, coding, Q&A, and more, all under an Apache 2.0 licence for custom fine-tuning.
Smaller models recommended for Macs with less RAM; larger gpt-oss-120b needs 60–80GB memory.
Why This Matters: Local AI keeps your data private, avoids subscription costs, and puts you in full control of the model’s behaviour.
Kismet: The 20b model’s 4-bit quantization means it’s running at one-quarter the precision of its original format, a trick borrowed from early video game consoles squeezing graphics into impossibly small memory. 👉 Full story here
Electromobility
EV Boom is no longer Just a Rich-Country Thing - The Global South Is Racing Ahead
Forget the oil lobby’s bedtime story about emerging markets driving future petrol demand - from Vietnam to Nepal, EV adoption is outpacing much of the “developed” world. With lower prices, macroeconomic incentives, and an eye on cutting oil import bills, the Global South is seizing the EV lead while some rich nations trip over their own charger cables.
Key Highlights:
In 2024, over 75% of vehicle imports in Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Djibouti were pure EVs; Vietnam’s VinFast held a third of the domestic car market.
EVs in many emerging markets already hit price parity with petrol cars, in Thailand, they’re cheaper.
By 2030, EVs will displace 5.3 million barrels of oil per day, about 10% of current global road fuel use.
Why This Matters: This shift isn’t just about cleaner air, it’s about economic sovereignty, reduced oil dependency, and a once-in-a-century industrial power pivot.
Kismet: India could erase its persistent current account deficit just by switching half its car fleet to electric, effectively turning the nation’s biggest energy vulnerability into a fiscal win. 👉 Full story here
@thefinanceinfo Rory Sutherland explains why petrol cars only seem normal because they came first — not because they’re better. If we’d started with elect... See more
I’ve seen this TikTok video of Rory Sutherland several times, but when a former SAP colleague, and newsletter subscriber emailed me the link, and suggested I add it to the newsletter, I realised he was right. It is an excellent way of looking at EVs. If you’re not familiar with Rory Sutherland, there are many videos of him online. He’s an excellent speaker (we spoke together at an event in Porto a few years back), and always has a unique perspective on things. Well worth watching.
Clean Energy
Scotland Greenlights Mega Offshore Wind Farm — Enough Power for Every Home Twice Over
Scotland has approved Berwick Bank, one of the world’s largest offshore wind farms, set to generate double the annual electricity needs of every Scottish household. Supporters hail it as a leap toward net zero and energy security, while conservationists warn it could be catastrophic for already-declining seabird populations.
Key Highlights:
Up to 307 turbines planned, 23 miles offshore, with capacity to supercharge Scotland’s renewable output.
Project expected to create thousands of jobs and add £8.3bn to the economy over its lifetime.
Approval contingent on a seabird compensation plan to address impacts near key colonies like Bass Rock.
Why This Matters: It’s a classic climate conundrum, balancing urgent clean energy expansion with biodiversity protection, and Scotland just put a big bet on wind.
Kismet: If Berwick Bank meets its projections, it will produce more clean electricity each year than Scotland’s entire current offshore wind fleet combined, a literal doubling of the nation’s ocean energy game. 👉 Full story here
California’s $2B Solar+Storage Beast Now Powering LA Homes
In Mojave, Arevon Energy’s $2 billion Eland Solar-plus-Storage Project is now fully live, pairing 758 MWdc of solar with 300 MW/1,200 MWh of batteries. It’s delivering enough clean power for 266,000 homes, and pushing Los Angeles past the 60% clean energy mark on its way to 100% by 2035.
Key Highlights:
1.36 million solar panels + 172 LFP batteries make up the twin Eland 1 & 2 sites.
Will supply 7% of LA’s total electricity needs and created 1,000 construction jobs.
$36 million in lifetime payments headed to local governments.
Why This Matters:It’s a prime example of how solar and storage can work together to replace fossil fuels at city scale, reliably, day and night.
Kismet: If Eland’s output were a country’s total generation, it would rank ahead of several Pacific island nations, all from one patch of California desert. 👉 Full story here
China’s First Million-Kilowatt “Green Power Express” Set to Launch in the Desert
On the edge of the Taklamakan Desert, PetroChina’s 1.3 GW Shangku solar project is about to flip the switch on northwest China’s first million-kilowatt-level direct-to-industry green power line. The setup will beam clean electricity straight to heavy industry, slashing costs, cutting carbon, and making petrochemicals EU CBAM-compliant.
Key Highlights:
23 km² of solar arrays plus large-scale energy storage for round-the-clock supply.
Will deliver 2.1 billion kWh/year directly to local industry, taking green power use in the park from 0% to 60.4%.
Positions Tarim’s ethylene plant as a low-carbon production base with EU export approval.
Why This Matters:This is renewables skipping the middleman, proof that industrial-scale green power can be cheaper, cleaner, and strategically game-changing.
Kismet:By directly wiring solar to factories, the project turns a petrochemical hub into a showcase for “photovoltaic sand control”, tackling desertification and decarbonisation in one shot. 👉 Full story here
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Latest Publications
How Tech, Data, and AI Are Turning Supply Chains into Climate Solutions
Your supply chain is likely your biggest climate problem - and your biggest opportunity. In my latest post, I break down how IoT, digital twins, and AI are slashing Scope 3 emissions, cutting waste, and turning sustainability from a compliance chore into a competitive edge. From carbon-aware production scheduling to circular product design, the tools to halve emissions by 2030 are here, the only question is whether leaders will use them in time.
Key Highlights:
IoT and digital twins deliver real-time visibility, enabling waste cuts and energy optimisation at scale.
AI boosts forecasting accuracy and enables carbon-aware decision-making in sourcing and production.
Circularity strategies like reverse logistics and product passports unlock billions in recovered value.
Why This Matters: Supply chains drive up to 90% of corporate emissions, getting them to net zero is both a climate imperative and a market advantage.
Kismet: Cutting just 15% of global supply chain waste could save more emissions annually than the entire aviation industry produces. 👉 Read the full post here
AI, Data, and Collaboration: The New Supply Chain Sustainability Playbook
In this episode, I sat down with Blue Yonder’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Saskia van Gendt, to explore how technology and tighter collaboration between supply chain and sustainability teams can cut carbon and waste at scale. From AI-driven demand planning to carbon-aware sourcing, we unpacked why breaking down silos, and acting now, is the only way to meet 2030 targets without last-minute panic.
Key Highlights:
Scope 3 is the “last frontier” of emissions reduction, hard to measure, but where up to 90% of corporate impact hides.
AI and integrated data platforms are enabling carbon-aware decision-making, waste cuts, and preferential sourcing from low-carbon suppliers.
Leaders tie carbon and waste targets to executive pay, align sustainability and supply chain KPIs, and use tech to avoid costly expedited shipping.
Why This Matters: Supply chain decarbonisation isn’t a niche CSR exercise, it’s the lever that determines whether global climate goals are achievable.
Kismet: One Blue Yonder customer cut over a million transport miles in South America, simply by using AI to plan better. That’s emissions savings and freight cost cuts in a single stroke. 🎧 Listen to the full episode
Coming Soon to the podcasts
I’m taking a couple of weeks off for a summer break so for the next two weeks, I’ll be replaying some of the best episodes of 2025, so far. Then starting September 1st I will be talking to Emily Wilkinson of ODI, and Steve Saltzgiver of RTA Fleet.
Don’t forget to follow the podcasts in your podcast app of choice to ensure you don’t miss any episodes.
Featured Chart
Vaccines work.
If anyone tries to tell you that biofuels are a good idea, remember this graph showing how inefficient they are per hectare vs solar panels.
Misc stuff
“…dozens of people” 😆😆😆
Those of us with older kids will get this!
I’d be sooooo tempted!
Engage
If you made it this far, very well done! If you liked this newsletter, or learned something new, feel free to share this newsletter with family and friends. Encourage folks to sign up for it.
Finally, since being impacted by the tech layoffs, I'm currently in the market for a new role. If you know someone who could benefit from my tech savvy, sustainability, and strong social media expertise, I'd be really grateful for a referral.
If you have any comments or suggestions for how I can improve this newsletter, don’t hesitate to let me know. Thanks.
*** Be aware that any typos you find in this newsletter are tests to see who is paying attention! ***
And Finally
And finally, I had a bit of a leak when donating blood this morning! Messed up the jeans quite a bit, and left a large puddle on the floor of the blood donation centre, but apart from that, no harm done!
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