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Hey everyone, it’s Thursday, and FutureProof is back.
This week, all seven European Car of the Year finalists are electric, Spain's solar boom saves €17 billion, China's heavy trucks abandon diesel, and AI learns to predict medical emergencies.
Highlights this week:
The Stakes: Record CO₂ levels and UN projections of 2.8°C warming expose the widening gap between climate ambition and reality.
Climate: Democrats sweep the US midterms, while Brazil proposes a global roadmap away from fossil fuels.
AI: Wearables predict dangerous blood pressure crises three days early, and OpenAI measures how AI can make everyday life easier.
EVs: Electric trucks capture 50% of China's September heavy-truck sales, and all seven European Car of the Year finalists are electric.
Clean energy: Solar saves Spain an estimated €17bn in wholesale electricity costs, while renewable-powered AI infrastructure offers an alternative to grid-straining data centres.
Podcasts: Marco Krapels of Enphase explains how millions of homes could become virtual power plants in this week's Climate Confident.
Plenty happening. Let’s get into it.
Interestingly, this week's common thread is a shift from whether clean technologies can compete to how quickly we can deploy them. The economics increasingly speak for themselves. The challenge now is building the infrastructure, markets and political will to match.
The Stakes
The Climate Reality Check: Record CO₂, 2.8°C Warming, and a Vanishing 1.5°C Lifeline
Two heavyweight UN reports have landed, and the findings are sobering: atmospheric CO₂ has hit another record, while the UN Environment Programme confirms we've lost the chance to keep warming below 1.5°C without significant overshoot. I find the disconnect staggering: clean energy is accelerating, yet current policies still put us on course for 2.8°C of warming by 2100.
Three key highlights:
Greenhouse gases keep accumulating: The World Meteorological Organization reports CO₂ concentrations reached 426.8 parts per million in 2025, 53% above pre-industrial levels, with methane and nitrous oxide also setting records.
The emissions gap is enormous: UNEP says global emissions must fall 45% by 2035 to keep a return to 1.5°C within reach. Current national pledges deliver just 11-15%.
Overshoot is now unavoidable: Even the most ambitious feasible pathway sees temperatures peak around 1.7-1.8°C, requiring roughly 320 billion tonnes of CO₂ removal this century to bring warming back towards 1.5°C.
Why This Matters: Every fraction of a degree adds irreversible risks, and the difference between a difficult future and a catastrophic one increasingly depends on how quickly we replace fossil fuels with clean alternatives.
Kismet: Solar deployment has grown seven times faster than projections made a decade ago, proving technological progress can spectacularly outperform expectations, even while political action falls disastrously short. 👉 Links Inline
Climate
Democrats Sweep US Midterms - and Trump's Fossil Fuel Agenda Hits a Roadblock
Tuesday's extraordinary Democratic sweep has flipped both houses of Congress and several state governments, potentially putting the brakes on Trump's assault on climate policy. I'm particularly intrigued by what drove many of these victories: soaring energy bills, anger over endless energy wars, and growing demands for affordable electricity. Turns out energy policy is very much a kitchen-table issue.
Three key highlights:
Congress fights back: From January, Democrats can investigate frozen climate funding, scrutinise fossil fuel deals, and potentially restore clean energy tax credits. Trump's veto remains a formidable obstacle to new legislation.
States gain momentum: Democratic victories open opportunities for solar, batteries and grid investment. In Georgia, Democrats took control of the utility regulator for the first time in 31 years, promising tighter scrutiny of electricity costs.
Energy affordability takes centre stage: Voters challenged utilities and politicians over rising bills and data-centre expansion, making the cost of powering AI an increasingly potent political issue.
Why This Matters: The election creates new opportunities to protect clean energy investment and accelerate decarbonisation, particularly at state level, although meaningful federal progress will still face political obstacles.
Kismet: An astonishing 33 of 34 ballot initiatives restricting data-centre construction won voter backing. Silicon Valley may have discovered that AI enthusiasm evaporates rather quickly when someone else gets the electricity bill. 👉 Links Inline
Brazil Unveils a Global Fossil Fuel Exit Plan - Now for the Awkward Bit
Three years after nearly 200 countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels, Brazil has finally produced something rather important: a roadmap for actually doing it. I'm encouraged by the ambition, although there's a delicious irony in an oil-producing country proposing a fossil fuel exit strategy while simultaneously exploring opportunities to pump more of the stuff.
Three key highlights:
A three-phase exit strategy: Countries will assess their fossil fuel dependencies over the next two years, evaluate climate progress, and develop measures to restrict fossil fuel supplies between 2031 and 2033.
Different countries, different pathways: Brazil proposes grouping nations into 12 categories based on their economic circumstances, allowing policies to reflect the challenges facing importers, exporters and financially constrained economies.
No consensus required: After more than 80 countries failed to secure an agreement at COP30, Brazil is pursuing a voluntary initiative, feeding into the UN's 2028 climate stocktake and aiming for widespread implementation by 2035.
Why This Matters: Moving beyond diplomatic promises to practical, country-specific fossil fuel exit strategies could accelerate the energy transition, provided governments actually follow through.
Kismet: Brazil isn't stopping at fossil fuels. It's also developing a roadmap to end deforestation, having just recorded its lowest deforestation rate on record. Proof that environmental ambition can translate into measurable progress, not just another COP communiqué. 👉 Full story here
AI News
AI Could Predict Dangerous Blood Pressure Crises Three Days Before They Strike
Imagine your wearable warning your doctor about a potentially life-threatening blood pressure crisis 72 hours before it happens. Researchers combining AI with wearable health data and blood pressure monitoring have demonstrated precisely that possibility, with early interventions associated with 61% fewer crises and 45% fewer emergency department visits. That's AI doing something genuinely useful.
Three key highlights:
Three days' warning: Researchers monitored 4,190 adults with hypertension, using AI to identify patterns signalling an impending hypertensive crisis.
Promising predictive accuracy: Among patients receiving no alert, 97.4% remained crisis-free. Of those flagged as high-risk, 32% experienced a crisis, although early medical intervention may have prevented others.
Earlier treatment, fewer emergencies: Patients whose doctors adjusted medication within 24 hours of an alert experienced substantially fewer crises and emergency visits than those without timely intervention.
Why This Matters: Moving healthcare from reacting to medical emergencies to anticipating and potentially preventing them could save lives, reduce hospitalisations and transform chronic disease management, although these preliminary, non-peer-reviewed findings still need broader validation.
Kismet: One of the strongest warning signs appeared while patients were asleep: blood pressure failing to fall overnight was associated with nearly FIVE times the odds of a crisis. Sometimes the most important health signals emerge when we're doing absolutely nothing. 👉 Full story here
OpenAI Discovers AI Is Useful (Shocking!) - And the Biggest Benefits May Be Surprisingly Ordinary
OpenAI has published research confirming that AI is useful. Hold the front page! But beneath the corporate self-congratulation sits something genuinely interesting: its new LifeVal benchmark suggests AI is getting dramatically better at handling the everyday headaches of life, from managing finances and finding childcare to sorting paperwork and organising healthcare.
Three key highlights:
Real-life challenges: LifeVal evaluates AI against 169 practical, personalised tasks, including household administration, caring for relatives, finding jobs and accessing government services.
Rapid improvement: GPT-5.2 scored 49.3% on the benchmark's grading system, while the latest models reach around 80%. That's substantial progress in roughly a year.
Enormous potential value: A consumer survey suggests Americans would collectively pay an estimated $1.7 trillion annually for a hypothetical perfect digital assistant. That's potential demand, mind you, not savings current AI has actually delivered.
Why This Matters: If AI can reliably take care of everyday administrative burdens, it could give people back something far more valuable than another productivity metric: their time, although the benchmark measures capability rather than demonstrated real-world benefits.
Kismet: Household tasks and services accounted for an estimated $505 billion of that potential annual demand, more than twice the combined value of education and job-search assistance. Perhaps AI's killer application isn't solving quantum physics. It's finally getting someone to organise the bloody plumber. 👉 Full story here
Electromobility
China's Electric Trucks Hit 50% — and Diesel Is Losing Its Grip
Electric trucks accounted for an astonishing 50.3% of China's new heavy-truck sales in September, and the impact is already showing up in diesel consumption. I've been saying for years that economics, not environmental altruism, will drive transport electrification, and with electric trucks now cheaper to operate on many Chinese routes, plus diesel prices swinging wildly thanks to geopolitical instability, I suspect Europe and other markets will follow faster than most expect.
Three key highlights:
Sales are surging: China sold 226,400 electric heavy trucks in the first nine months of 2026, up 64%, with electric models capturing 64.5% of tractor-trailer sales in September.
The economics are compelling: Research suggests electric trucks can cost 19% less per tonne-kilometre than diesel in favourable operating conditions, while battery swapping tackles charging downtime.
Diesel demand is taking a hit: Electric trucks are estimated to displace 230,000 barrels of diesel daily in China this year, while European electric heavy-truck registrations rose 60%, albeit from a much smaller base.
Why This Matters: As electric trucks become cheaper to run and diesel price volatility makes fleet budgeting increasingly unpredictable, electrification shifts from a sustainability initiative to a compelling commercial and energy-security strategy.
Kismet: Chinese battery giant CATL has developed standardised heavy-truck battery packs that can be swapped in approximately five minutes! So much for the argument that electric trucks must spend half their working lives plugged in. 👉 Full story here
Petrol Cars Shut Out! Every European Car of the Year Finalist Is Electric
Well, this is quite the milestone. For the first time in the 63-year history of Europe's Car of the Year awards, ALL SEVEN finalists are fully electric. As someone whose Kia EV3 won the 2025 World Car of the Year award (a separate competition), I'm particularly delighted to see electric vehicles increasingly setting the standard for automotive excellence.
Three key highlights:
A clean sweep: The finalists are the BMW iX3, Cupra Raval, Hyundai Ioniq 3, Kia EV2, Renault Twingo, Volkswagen ID.Polo and Volvo EX60. Not a petrol engine in sight.
Affordability matters: Five finalists are compact or smaller, more affordable models, demonstrating that EV innovation is moving beyond expensive luxury vehicles.
The winner is guaranteed electric: Judges assess price, safety, comfort, innovation and driving performance, with the winner announced on 8 January 2027 in Brussels.
Why This Matters: Electric vehicles are moving from alternative technology to automotive mainstream, increasingly competing on the qualities that matter to ordinary drivers rather than simply their environmental credentials.
Kismet: The Cupra Raval and Volkswagen ID.Polo are competing against each other despite sharing the same factory in Martorell, Spain. Two electric contenders, one production plant, and absolutely no combustion engine required. 👉 Full story here
Clean Energy
Spain's Solar Revolution Saves €17 Billion — and Slashes Electricity Prices by 46%
Here's a number that should make fossil fuel enthusiasts distinctly uncomfortable: solar power saved Spain an estimated €17.02 billion in wholesale electricity costs in just 18 months. A new study by Spanish solar association UNEF finds that without solar, average wholesale prices would have been 86% higher. Living here in Spain, with solar panels on my own roof, I find that rather satisfying!
Three key highlights:
€17 billion in savings: Between January 2025 and June 2026, utility-scale solar accounted for an estimated €14.23 billion in wholesale market savings, with rooftop self-consumption contributing another €2.79 billion.
Dramatically cheaper electricity: Average wholesale prices were €60.20/MWh, compared with an estimated €112/MWh without solar generation, a 46% reduction.
Summer savings are spectacular: In June 2026, solar helped keep average wholesale prices at €69.60/MWh, versus an estimated €162.70/MWh without it.
Why This Matters: Solar is delivering far more than emissions reductions; it's demonstrably lowering wholesale electricity costs and reducing dependence on volatile fossil fuel markets, although these modelled savings don't translate directly into household bill reductions.
Kismet: Even people without solar panels benefit from their neighbours' installations! Rooftop solar reduces demand from the grid, helping lower wholesale prices for everyone. Turns out sunshine is rather generous about sharing the savings.
👉 Full story here
AI Data Centres Face a Backlash. Clean Energy Could Change Everything.
As I mentioned above, American voters just backed 33 of 34 ballot initiatives restricting data-centre construction, amid growing anger over electricity bills and grid pressures. Meanwhile, China's Envision Group is building a colossal AI campus around abundant renewable energy, an approach strikingly similar to what GRIDSERVE founder Toddington Harper described when I recently chatted to him about Gigatons, his new venture, for an upcoming Climate Confident episode. Perhaps the solution isn't simply building more power plants. It's fundamentally rethinking where and how we build AI infrastructure.
Three key highlights:
3 GW of AI infrastructure: Envision's Galaxy Campus in Inner Mongolia is scheduled for completion by the end of 2028, with global expansion ambitions reaching 10 GW.
Follow the clean energy: Instead of adding enormous new loads to already strained grids, Envision is prioritising locations with abundant renewable resources, including potential sites across Europe, Africa and Latin America.
Energy companies become AI landlords: Envision supplies power infrastructure and facilities, while technology companies bring their own computing equipment. It's a potentially transformative business model for renewable energy developers.
Why This Matters: As communities push back against AI's growing electricity demands, locating data centres alongside abundant clean energy could reduce grid congestion, control costs and limit emissions, while giving renewable energy developers an enormous new market.
Kismet: Envision's campus sits 350 kilometres northwest of Beijing, demonstrating that the best location for AI infrastructure might be determined by electricity availability rather than proximity to technology hubs. The cloud, it turns out, has very earthly requirements. 👉 Full story here
Latest Climate Confident:
Your Home Could Become a Power Plant, and Help Solve AI's Energy Problem
What if the answer to soaring electricity demand wasn't building more gas power stations, but making better use of the energy infrastructure we already have? In this week's Climate Confident, I spoke with Marco Krapels, Senior Vice President and CMO at Enphase Energy, about how millions of homes equipped with solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles could become coordinated virtual power plants, supporting increasingly strained grids while earning homeowners money.
Three key highlights:
An enormous untapped resource: Enphase has five million customers. Adding a 10 kWh battery to just one million homes would create 10 GWh of distributed energy storage, although reliable grid capacity depends on how much power can actually be dispatched.
The technology is already working: Enphase participates in approximately 65 virtual power plant programmes, helping utilities harness household batteries to manage peak electricity demand rather than relying exclusively on conventional power plants.
AI needs smarter electricity infrastructure: Enphase is developing solid-state transformers that it says could improve data-centre power conversion efficiency by up to 6%. But, as I challenged Marco, greater efficiency doesn't automatically mean lower emissions if it simply enables more computing.
Why This Matters: Coordinating existing distributed energy resources could unlock valuable grid flexibility, reduce the need for expensive fossil-fuel peaking plants, and turn households and businesses into active, compensated participants in the energy system.
Kismet: An electric car with an 80 kWh battery stores as much energy as EIGHT typical 10 kWh home batteries. With bidirectional charging, your car could eventually earn its keep while parked, helping power your home or support the grid. Not bad for an expensive asset that spends most of its life doing absolutely nothing. 🎧 Listen to the full episode
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Featured Chart(s)
Solar prices continue to fall!
Interesting BEV sales curves here - shame what’s happened in the US. Hopefully this week’s elections is the beginning of a turnaround there.
It’d be interesting to correlate sales figures with the price of fast charging by country!
The (newly blue) state of Texas is seeing huge reductions in electricity peak prices due to the rollout of batteries there.
Shoe people this chart when they “Whatabout” you with the energy transition means we have to mine tons of stuff!
Misc stuff
As a beer drinker, I found this interesting
AI vs disinformation
On the topic of disinformation…
Hmmm…
Obligatory Trump Cartoon
London newspaper The Metro pulling no punches in its headline
Engage
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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
Is this what we can expect now that Texas has gone blue?
Arnold Schwarzenegger. Jay Shetty. And You.
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