Hey everyone, welcome back. The holidays are over, inboxes are refilling, and FutureProof is back for its first edition of 2026.
And, inconveniently for the “everything’s slowing down” crowd, the transition didn’t take a break.
The big three:
Climate action advanced in ways that cut emissions without cutting productivity, travel, or growth.
AI embedded itself deeper into healthcare, homes, and the physical world, less chatbot, more backbone.
Clean energy kept winning on economics, reliability, and scale, often in places people said it couldn’t.
Below, we’ve got China decarbonising faster than rhetoric elsewhere, aviation emissions that could be halved without cancelling holidays, Germany proving solar works without sunshine, fleets electrifying because the numbers work, batteries ageing better than expected, and even a solid-state battery story that’s happening this quarter.
Plus, a new Climate Confident episode on why LEED v5 could finally make low-carbon buildings the default.
As ever, FutureProof exists to remind you that the future isn’t doomed, it’s just arriving faster than the pessimists can update their scripts.
Let’s get into it.
Climate
China Is Speedrunning the Energy Transition (Everyone Else, Take Notes)
A new study from Mark Z. Jacobson quietly lands a fairly explosive conclusion: China, the world’s biggest energy consumer and emitter, is on track to wipe out all energy-related air pollution and carbon emissions by around 2051. Not eventually. Not theoretically. On current build rates. Meanwhile, most other large economies are strolling when they should be sprinting.
Key highlights
China is installing clean energy at a pace that dwarfs anything seen before, adding nearly 400 GW of wind and solar per year
China will generated over half the clean energy the US needs for full decarbonisation by mid-century… in 2025 alone
The study shows the blockers elsewhere aren’t technology or cost, they’re politics, planning, and a chronic allergy to urgency
Why This Matters: China proves deep, economy-wide decarbonisation isn’t a moonshot, it’s a deployment problem, and one many countries could fix quickly if they stopped pretending incrementalism was a strategy.
Kismet: China’s 2025 clean energy build-out is roughly 20 times larger than France’s fastest-ever nuclear expansion year in the 1980s, which rather ruins the “this can’t be done quickly” argument in one neat comparison. 👉 Full story here
Green Tech Isn’t a Cost. It’s a Productivity Cheat Code.
And speaking of China - the country just delivered a neat little rebuttal to the idea that cutting emissions means economic self-harm. Researchers have shown that an emission-free tweak to a coal-based chemical process can slash CO₂ and triple output of high-value industrial materials. So yes, lower pollution. Also yes, more stuff. Awkward for the “green rules kill growth” crowd.
Key highlights
A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University cut emissions from a major fossil-based process to near zero
The same change boosts productivity of valuable chemicals like olefins by more than 3x
This directly undercuts claims popularised by Donald Trump that climate action is an economic drag
Why This Matters: Decarbonisation isn’t just compatible with industrial competitiveness, it can actively improve it, which means governments using “jobs and growth” as an excuse to stall are increasingly out of runway.
Kismet: The breakthrough works by shutting down wasteful side reactions at the molecular level, meaning less energy, fewer emissions, and more output, which is basically lean manufacturing… but for chemistry. 👉 Full story here
Want to Halve Aviation Emissions? Start With Business Class.
A new analysis of 27 million flights lands an uncomfortable conclusion: aviation emissions could be cut by up to 50% without flying less, simply by flying differently. No miracle fuels required. No offsets. Just fewer premium seats, fuller planes, and modern aircraft. Cue turbulence in the executive lounge.
Key highlights
Premium seats massively inflate emissions: business and first-class passengers are responsible for 3–13x the CO₂ of economy travellers
Running near-full flights with today’s most efficient aircraft could cut fuel use by 50–75%
These measures outperform SAF and offset schemes on near-term emissions cuts, according to the analysis
Why This Matters: Aviation’s climate problem isn’t primarily about technology, it’s about how capacity is allocated, and this shows emissions can fall fast if efficiency beats luxury.
Kismet: Just 1% of the global population causes 50% of aviation emissions, which means climate progress in flying hinges less on guilt-tripping holidays and more on fixing premium-heavy business models. 👉 Full story here
AI News
Your Sleep Is a Health Early-Warning System. AI Just Learned How to Read It.
This is one of those AI stories that actually earns its keep. Researchers have trained a medical AI model to read data from a single night of sleep and flag long-term risks for more than 130 diseases, including dementia, heart disease, and stroke. No cameras. No tracking your day. Just signals your body already produces every night.
Key highlights
The model was trained on 585,000 hours of sleep data from 65,000 people, analysing brainwaves, breathing, heart rate, and muscle activity
It can predict serious conditions years before symptoms appear, when prevention actually works
The system performs consistently across hospitals and countries, meaning it’s designed for real healthcare, not tech demos
Why This Matters: This is AI moving healthcare from “wait until something breaks” to early intervention, cheaper care, and better outcomes, without invasive tests or constant monitoring.
Kismet: The model predicts dementia more accurately using sleep data than some MRI-based approaches, suggesting your pillow may one day outperform million-euro scanners. 👉 Full story here
Alexa+ Isn’t Chasing the AI Gadget. It’s Already Sitting on Your Shelf.
While Silicon Valley is busy whispering about the mysterious AI device being cooked up by OpenAI and Jony Ive, Amazon has taken a much less theatrical route. It didn’t invent a new object. It upgraded the ones already plugged in across millions of homes, and called it Alexa+.
Key highlights
Amazon gets instant AI distribution via Prime accounts and existing Echo, Fire TV, and Alexa-enabled hardware
Alexa+ keeps context across Echo devices, Fire TV, apps, and browsers, making it less of a chatbot and more of a continuous assistant
Unlike most AI tools, Alexa+ is designed to do things, book services, manage calendars, control homes, not just talk
Why This Matters: The AI race isn’t just about models or glossy hardware, it’s about habit and reach, and Amazon already owns both in a way most AI startups are still pitching decks about.
Kismet: For many people, “Customers who bought this also bought…” was their first real encounter with AI, which means Amazon has been shaping human–machine trust for over two decades without calling it that. 👉 Full story here
NVIDIA Just Open-Sourced the Brains of Robotaxis. That’s… Inconvenient for Some People.
While a certain EV company is still promising fully autonomous robotaxis any day now, NVIDIA quietly dropped Alpamayo, an open-source AI stack designed to solve the hardest problem in autonomy: rare, messy, “this was not in the training data” driving scenarios. No hype video. Just tools, models, and datasets that actually scale.
Key highlights
Alpamayo introduces reasoning-based “vision-language-action” models, meaning AVs can think through cause and effect, not just react to pixels
NVIDIA made the whole thing open: models, simulation tools, and massive real-world datasets, already being picked up by Lucid, JLR, Uber, and Berkeley DeepDrive
This is aimed squarely at Level 4 autonomy, where safety, explainability, and edge-case handling matter more than vibes
Why This Matters: Autonomy doesn’t fail because cars can’t see, it fails because they can’t reason, and NVIDIA just handed the industry a shared foundation for doing exactly that, without waiting for one company’s proprietary miracle.
Kismet: This approach quietly undercuts the idea that autonomy is a single-company moonshot; by open-sourcing reasoning and simulation at scale, NVIDIA is turning robotaxis into an ecosystem problem… which is usually where reality wins. 👉 Full story here
Electromobility
Electric Vans Just Hit a Record. The Real Story Is Who’s Buying Them.
Electric mobility has officially escaped the driveway. In the UK, electric van sales jumped 36% in 2025, setting a new annual record, and this isn’t early adopters messing about. It’s fleets. Serious ones. The kind that only move when the economics work.
Key highlights
Nearly 31,000 electric vans were registered in the UK in 2025, the highest level ever, despite a shrinking overall van market
More than 40 zero-emission van models are now available, tipping availability from niche to mainstream
Major operators like Royal Mail, Amazon, Tesco, HelloFresh, and Domino’s are scaling electric fleets because the economics finally make sense
Why This Matters: Fleets switch when vehicles are cheaper, more reliable, and operationally boring, and electric vans are now all three, which means decarbonisation is quietly accelerating where emissions actually are.
Kismet: Because delivery vans drive far more kilometres, burn more fuel, and operate every single day, electrifying one van cuts more emissions than electrifying several private cars. Fleet decisions therefore deliver outsized climate impact, fast. 👉 Full story here
EV Batteries Aren’t the Weak Link Anymore. CATL Just Proved It.
One of the quiet myths still hanging around EVs is battery longevity. New data from CATL should finally put that to bed. Independent testing shows CATL batteries degrading significantly slower than rivals, even after eye-watering mileage. This isn’t incremental progress. It’s a structural advantage.
Key highlights
Tests cited by Morgan Stanley show CATL batteries retaining around 400 km of range after 2 million km driven, well ahead of competitors
CATL LFP batteries in real-world energy storage projects are still holding 90%+ capacity after 14 years, with no replacements
Lower degradation means cheaper EVs to own, longer vehicle lifetimes, and better economics for fleets and second-life storage
Why This Matters: Battery degradation has been one of the last psychological brakes on EV adoption, and data like this removes it. Longer-lasting batteries mean lower total cost of ownership, less material churn, and faster electrification across cars, vans, buses, and grids.
Kismet: At this point, the battery in an EV is increasingly likely to outlast the car wrapped around it, which quietly flips the entire resale and circular-economy story on its head. 👉 Full story here
Despite headlines, EV Sales Are Set To Grow At Least Another 12% In 2026!
Despite the hand-wringing headlines, global EV sales are still on track for double-digit growth this year. Not explosive. Not bubble-like. Just steady, compounding expansion as EVs move from “early adopter tech” to default purchase for more buyers, fleets, and cities.
Key highlights
2026 growth is expected to remain firmly in double digits, even off a much larger base
The slowdown narrative mostly reflects the end of subsidies and supply bottlenecks easing, not collapsing demand
EV adoption is broadening geographically and across vehicle types, which is exactly what a healthy market does
Why This Matters: Sustained double-digit growth at scale is how transitions actually happen, and it signals that EVs no longer need hype to keep winning on cost, performance, and convenience.
Kismet: Historically, technologies that settle into boring, predictable growth phases tend to become infrastructure, and once something becomes infrastructure, it’s almost impossible to dislodge. EVs are drifting into that territory now. 👉 Full story here
Clean Energy
Germany Just Let Solar Overtake Coal and Gas. Yes, Germany.
In a country better known for clouds than sunshine, solar just pulled off something quietly historic. In 2025, Germany generated 18% of its electricity from solar, up from 14% the year before, enough to leapfrog both coal and gas. Latitude excuses are officially out of service.
Key highlights
Solar delivered 87 TWh of electricity in 2025, overtaking lignite coal (14%) and gas (16%) in the power mix
Wind remains number one at 27%, meaning renewables are now doing the real heavy lifting
Germany achieved this despite being further north than the US and having objectively worse solar resources
Why This Matters: If solar can dominate in one of Europe’s least sunny countries, the constraint elsewhere isn’t physics or cost, it’s policy, permitting, and political will.
Kismet: Germany now installs solar cheaper than many sunnier countries, proving that soft infrastructure, not sunlight, is what actually determines clean energy speed. 👉 Full story here
The Clean Energy Transition Is Becoming a Major Jobs Engine
As the UK shifts away from fossil fuels, the power grid is hiring at the fastest pace since the 1950s. This isn’t theoretical green jobs. It’s boots, hard hats, engineers, apprentices, and veterans being pulled into the electricity system because demand is exploding.
Key highlights
Scottish Power plans to more than double its transmission workforce, from ~1,200 to 2,600
The UK electricity workforce is projected to grow from 160,000 to nearly 290,000 jobs by 2030
Median salaries range from £41k to £65k, well above the national average, as grid upgrades accelerate for renewables, EVs, and heat pumps
Why This Matters: The energy transition isn’t a job-loss problem, it’s a skills bottleneck, and countries that move fastest will capture long-term employment, industrial capability, and energy security.
Kismet: Grid operators are now competing with tech and defence firms for talent, which tells you exactly how central clean electricity has become to modern economies. 👉 Full story here
Battery Energy Storage
Solid-State Batteries Just Moved From “Soon” to “This Quarter”.
Most solid-state battery stories live permanently in the land of “late this decade.” This one doesn’t. Donut Lab says its all-solid-state batteries are production-ready now, with customer electric motorcycles hitting public roads this quarter. That makes this claim unusually easy to verify.
Key highlights
Donut Lab claims 400 Wh/kg energy density, 5-minute full charging, and intrinsic safety from a fully solid electrolyte
Verge Motorcycles expects solid-state powered bikes on the road this quarter, not in pilot fleets or demos
While most competitors target 2027–2030 for production, Donut Lab is putting real vehicles in customers’ hands first
Why This Matters: If these batteries perform as advertised in everyday use, solid-state energy storage just crossed from research promise into commercial reality, accelerating electrification timelines across mobility and beyond.
Kismet: Because this is happening in motorcycles first, not cars, Donut Lab has picked a platform where fast charging, weight, and thermal performance matter brutally, which makes success here a stronger signal than a controlled automotive demo ever could. 👉 Full story here
Fusion
A Fusion Breakthrough That’s Actually About Physics, Not Timelines
I’m normally allergic to fusion hype, but this one is worth a raised eyebrow. Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have managed to sustain plasma densities previously thought impossible, breaking the so-called Greenwald limit inside a tokamak reactor. That’s a real constraint being lifted, not a vague promise about future power plants.
Key highlights
Researchers achieved unprecedented plasma density in China’s “artificial sun” reactor while maintaining stability
The breakthrough uses plasma–wall self-organisation, solving a long-standing instability problem in magnetic confinement
Higher stable plasma density directly improves the odds of useful energy output in future fusion reactors
Why This Matters: Fusion’s problem hasn’t been imagination, it’s been physics. Removing a hard theoretical limit meaningfully shifts what’s possible, even if commercial power is still years away.
Kismet: This doesn’t bring fusion power to the grid next decade, but it does shrink the gap between theory and engineering, which is the part fusion has repeatedly failed at for 70 years. 👉 Full story here
Climate Confident:
LEED v5 Is Here. And It’s About Making Low-Carbon Buildings the Easy Choice.
This week on Climate Confident, I kicked off 2026 with Tommy Linstroth, founder of Green Badger, to unpack why buildings quietly account for nearly 40% of global emissions, and how making sustainability easier, not nobler, is the fastest way to cut them. Less guilt. More systems thinking.
Key highlights
Why complexity, not cost or intent, is the biggest blocker to low-carbon construction
How LEED v5 shifts the focus hard toward embodied carbon, collaboration, and real-world data
Why “perfect plans” fail, and incremental roadmaps actually get us to 2030 and beyond
Why This Matters: You don’t decarbonise buildings by asking builders to become material scientists, you do it by designing systems where the sustainable option is the default.
Kismet: We happily plan the location of the US Open 24 years in advance, yet still claim 2040 climate goals are “too far away” to plan for, which says far more about governance than technology. 🎧 Listen to the full episode
Coming Soon to the podcasts
In the coming episodes I will be talking to Monique Parker & Catryna Jackson of Elevra and Evotix, and Ana Vaz, VP Product at Paebbl.
Don’t forget to follow the podcasts in your podcast app of choice to ensure you don’t miss any episodes.
Featured Chart(s)
India definitely has a coal problem, but it looks like they’re well on the way to bending that curve.
Britain isn’t known to be a particularly sunny country, but even there solar power is breaking records!
Misc stuff
Gotta love a good Airplane joke!
And speaking of puns!
Finally, for the month that’s in it!
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
My present from the Santa this year sucked!