In partnership with
Hey everyone, it’s Thursday, and FutureProof is back.
This week, solar panels become wedding presents, China's electric trucks overtake diesel, the world's biggest battery-powered ferry sets sail, and AI starts cracking some seriously difficult scientific problems.
Highlights this week:
The Stakes: Antarctic sea ice remains near record lows, while clean-energy growth faces a possible slowdown.
Climate: Lula wins another term in Brazil, and Chinese clean-tech exports could avoid 450 million tonnes of CO₂ annually.
AI: Microsoft tackles medical diagnosis, Claude accelerates drug discovery, and OpenAI challenges longstanding scientific theories.
EVs: Electric cars hit 67% of Chinese sales, heavy trucks overtake diesel, and shipping goes electric.
Clean energy: Hot bricks take on industrial emissions, while solar panels appear on Nigerian wedding lists.
Podcasts: My 300th Climate Confident explores Caribbean energy independence, while Resilient Supply Chain tackles warehouse blind spots.
Plenty happening. Let’s get into it.
Interestingly, the common thread this week is economics. From Nigerian households ditching generators to Chinese truckers abandoning diesel, clean technologies are increasingly winning because they're simply the better deal.
The Stakes
The Stakes: Antarctic Ice Near Record Lows as the Clean Energy Boom Hits a Wall
Antarctica’s winter sea ice reached its third-lowest maximum on record in 2026, while the head of IRENA warns that global renewable capacity additions are set to fall for the first time in five years. I find that juxtaposition particularly grim: the climate crisis keeps accelerating, yet we're struggling to connect the technologies that could help slow it.
Key Highlights:
Antarctic winter sea ice peaked at just 17.59 million km² in 2026, the third-lowest maximum since satellite records began.
Global renewable capacity additions hit a record 692 GW in 2025, but IRENA expects a decline in 2026.
Inadequate electricity grids, renewable power curtailment and trade barriers are slowing deployment, particularly in China.
Why This Matters: We cannot afford to let electricity infrastructure and policy failures become the bottleneck in decarbonisation while the planet's natural cooling systems deteriorate.
Kismet: China reportedly wasted enough clean electricity in the first half of 2026 to power Mexico for an entire year. That's not a generation problem. That's a staggering infrastructure failure. 👉 Links Inline
Climate
Lula Wins Brazil, the Amazon Gets a Reprieve - But There's an Oil-Sized Catch
Lula has pulled off a remarkable electoral comeback, winning 51.79% of the vote and securing another four years of forest protection policies in Brazil, where Amazon deforestation has already fallen to its lowest recorded level. That's enormously significant for the climate, although his enthusiasm for expanding oil exploration and a Congress packed with opponents of environmental regulation mean the celebrations come with some substantial caveats.
Key Highlights:
Lula defeated Flávio Bolsonaro, whose proposals included weakening environmental restrictions and expanding Amazon development.
Amazon deforestation has fallen to its lowest level since monitoring began in 1988, with Lula targeting zero deforestation across Brazil by 2030.
A Congress resistant to environmental protections and continued Petrobras oil expansion pose serious challenges.
Why This Matters: With roughly 60% of the Amazon inside Brazil, the country's environmental policies have enormous consequences for global emissions, biodiversity and the rainforest's increasingly precarious climate tipping point.
Kismet: Within hours of Lula's victory, the Netherlands pledged another $500 million to a rainforest protection fund, bringing announced commitments to approximately $7.8 billion. Apparently, protecting trees can attract investment rather quickly when political uncertainty clears. 👉 Full story here
China’s Clean-Tech Exports Could Slash 450 Million Tonnes of CO₂ a Year!
China's clean-tech export machine is doing something extraordinary: according to new CREA analysis, this year's shipments of solar panels, batteries, wind turbines and EVs are on track to prevent 450 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions annually outside China. That's roughly Brazil's entire annual fossil-fuel emissions, and compelling evidence that affordable clean technology is becoming one of the most powerful climate solutions on the planet.
Key Highlights:
Chinese clean-tech exports could avoid 8.4 billion tonnes of CO₂ over their operational lifetimes, accounting for manufacturing emissions.
In the first nine months of 2026, EV exports surged 61%, wind turbines 45%, batteries 39% and solar equipment 22%.
A remarkable 76% of lifetime avoided emissions will occur in the Global South, where fossil-heavy grids make clean technology particularly impactful.
Why This Matters: China's manufacturing scale is accelerating global decarbonisation, raising an uncomfortable question for governments erecting trade barriers: how do you protect domestic industries without slowing the deployment of affordable climate solutions?
Kismet: The carbon emissions generated manufacturing China's clean-tech exports are paid back in just six months of operation, according to the analysis of 2025 shipments. That's an extraordinary carbon return on investment. 👉 Full story here
AI News
AI Is Becoming Climate Science’s Secret Weapon - And It’s Already Delivering
Forget chatbots writing questionable poetry. AI is increasingly helping climate scientists forecast weather, detect methane leaks from space, track disappearing forests and simulate climate futures at a fraction of traditional computing costs. I'm particularly excited by the prospect of combining AI's speed with established physics-based models, although scientists warn that AI still struggles with unprecedented extreme weather events.
Key Highlights:
AI weather models now deliver competitive forecasts up to two weeks ahead, using dramatically less computing power.
Satellite-scanning AI detects methane leaks, illegal logging and glacier retreat, while helping optimise renewable-heavy electricity grids.
Hybrid AI-climate models could make sophisticated climate projections cheaper, faster and accessible to more researchers worldwide.
Why This Matters: Faster, cheaper climate intelligence could dramatically improve early warnings, emissions monitoring and climate adaptation, provided scientific rigour keeps pace with technological ambition.
Kismet: Scientists are exploring using AI to extract Antarctic sea-ice data from historical ship logs, whaling records and expedition photographs, potentially extending our climate records decades before satellite monitoring began in 1979. Sometimes the future of climate science starts with a century-old ship's log! 👉 Full story here
AI Leaves the Chatbot Behind: Diagnosing Disease, Designing Drugs, and Cracking Scientific Mysteries
The AI giants are getting seriously ambitious about science, and I'm loving the shift from generating content to generating discoveries. Microsoft reports diagnostic breakthroughs, Anthropic is using Claude to accelerate drug development, and OpenAI has announced AI-generated solutions to longstanding mathematical and physics problems. Some extraordinary claims here, although independent scientific validation remains essential.
Key Highlights:
Microsoft: Its MAI-DxO diagnostic system achieved 1.7 times physicians' accuracy on emergency department cases and more than twice their accuracy on complex medical cases with reference materials.
Anthropic: Claude generated 35,000 antibody designs in a month, helped engineer improved cancer-fighting cells, and cut pharmaceutical documentation review time by 89%.
OpenAI: Its models produced purported proofs addressing major problems in mathematics, computational complexity and quantum physics, with external academic groups now examining and explaining the results.
Why This Matters: AI's most transformative contribution may be accelerating scientific discovery itself, potentially compressing years of research into months while opening entirely new avenues for medicine, mathematics and physics.
Kismet: Two of the mathematicians who originally proposed the Exponential Time Hypothesis are now helping examine OpenAI's AI-generated proof that their own 30-year-old conjecture is false. Science has a wonderful sense of irony. 👉 Links Inline
Electromobility
China’s EVs Hit 67% of New Car Sales - Petrol Cars Are in Freefall!
China just crossed another extraordinary electrification milestone: 67% of new cars sold in September were electric or plug-in hybrid, up from a mere 6% in 2020. There's a fascinating twist, though: overall car sales are falling, but petrol cars are collapsing much faster, while Chinese manufacturers are exporting EVs at a phenomenal rate.
Key Highlights:
Electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles captured a record 67% market share in September, reaching 58% for 2026 so far.
Petrol-only car sales plunged 43% year-on-year in September, compared with an 8.5% decline for battery EVs.
Chinese electric and plug-in hybrid car exports surged 164% in September, even as domestic sales weakened.
Why This Matters: China's transition from combustion engines to electrification is reshaping global car manufacturing, reducing oil dependence and demonstrating how quickly an established technology can lose market share once a compelling alternative takes hold.
Kismet: China's growing electric car fleet has displaced an estimated 143 million barrels of oil since the Hormuz crisis began. That's rather useful when geopolitical tensions are making fossil fuels increasingly expensive and unreliable! 👉 Full story here
Diesel Loses Its Crown: China’s Electric Trucks Hit 50% as Giant Battery Ferry Sets Sail!
The electrification revolution is moving well beyond passenger cars. In September, new-energy trucks captured over 50% of China's heavy-duty market, comfortably overtaking diesel, while the world's largest battery-powered passenger ferry began carrying passengers between Argentina and Uruguay. With battery prices down 93% and energy density up more than 60% since 2010, I'm increasingly convinced diesel's dominance of commercial transport is living on borrowed time.
Key Highlights:
Trucks: New-energy heavy trucks reached 50.3% of Chinese sales in September, versus approximately 38.5% for diesel, while European electric truck sales grew around 40% in 2025.
Battery breakthrough: Battery pack prices have fallen 93% since 2010, while energy density has improved over 60%, opening up increasingly demanding commercial applications.
Why This Matters: Electrification is becoming an economically compelling alternative for heavy freight and short-distance shipping, reducing operating costs, emissions and exposure to increasingly volatile fossil-fuel markets.
Kismet: During testing, the giant electric ferry was so quiet that passengers complained about hearing the air-conditioning fans. After decades of roaring diesel engines, that's a rather wonderful problem to have! 👉 Links Inline
Clean Energy
Hot Bricks, Cold Cash: Rio Tinto Bets on a Surprisingly Simple Industrial Energy Revolution
Sometimes the best climate solutions are gloriously low-tech. Rio Tinto is planning a 360 MWh thermal battery from Rondo Energy at its Australian alumina refinery, using cheap renewable electricity to heat ordinary refractory bricks and deliver industrial steam without burning fossil fuels. I interviewed John O’Donnell, Rondo's CEO on Climate Confident a while back, so it's particularly satisfying to see this technology moving into one of industry's toughest decarbonisation challenges.
Key Highlights:
The proposed 30 MW/360 MWh installation at Rio Tinto's Yarwun refinery could receive up to A$75 million in government support, subject to engineering and investment milestones.
Rondo's heat batteries store renewable electricity as high-temperature heat, delivering approximately 97–98% efficiency when supplying industrial heat.
A Stanford study modelling 149 countries found that widespread firebrick storage could reduce battery storage requirements by 14.5% and annual energy costs by $119 billion in a fully renewable energy system.
Why This Matters: Industrial heat accounts for roughly 17% of global CO₂ emissions, and cheap, scalable thermal storage offers a practical route to electrifying factories that have relied on fossil fuels for generations.
Kismet: Firebricks have been used in industrial furnaces for thousands of years, but researchers estimate that storing heat in them costs less than one-tenth as much per unit of energy as storing electricity in conventional batteries. Sometimes the future really is built from bricks! 👉 Full story here
Forget the Toaster! Nigerians Are Putting Solar Panels on Their Wedding Lists
You know the energy transition is getting serious when solar panels start appearing on wedding registries alongside bed linen and kitchen appliances! In Nigeria, soaring petrol prices, unreliable electricity and increasingly affordable Chinese solar technology are driving a remarkable shift away from generators, with households discovering that sunshine is considerably cheaper than diesel.
Key Highlights:
Nigeria has already installed as much small-scale solar capacity in 2026 as it did in 2024 and 2025 combined.
A $4,500 home solar system can pay for itself in just 16 months, replacing generators that cost roughly $200 monthly to fuel.
Financing remains a major obstacle, with borrowing rates of 27–36% putting solar beyond the reach of many households.
Why This Matters: Nigeria demonstrates how clean energy adoption accelerates when economics and energy security align, even without climate policies driving the change.
Kismet: Solar has become so popular that established Nigerian generator manufacturers are now selling solar equipment themselves. Nothing says the market is changing quite like your competitors deciding to join you! 👉 Full story here
Latest podcast episodes
Climate Confident:
300 Episodes In: Why Caribbean Islands Could Teach the World How to Ditch Diesel
For my 300th episode of Climate Confident, I spoke with David Gumbs, Director of RMI's Global Islands Programme, about how Caribbean islands are tackling crippling electricity costs with solar, storage, geothermal and innovative financing. What fascinated me most wasn't the technology, but how communities are finding ways to make clean energy accessible to people who would otherwise be priced out of the transition.
Key Highlights:
Diesel dependence: Island electricity prices can reach 70–90 cents per kWh, making locally generated renewables an economic imperative.
Real-world progress: Barbados is expanding rooftop solar, Bermuda is electrifying its bus fleet, and the US Virgin Islands are developing virtual power plants.
Community ownership: The Dominican Republic's ConvitaSolar programme helps neighbours install solar together, with local financing recycling savings into further installations.
Why This Matters: Island nations are demonstrating that successful energy transitions depend as much on financing, community participation and smart regulation as they do on falling technology costs.
Kismet: Following the devastation of Hurricane Irma, RMI helped develop solar installation techniques capable of withstanding Category 5 hurricanes with relatively modest additional costs. Turns out resilience can be engineered into renewables without breaking the bank! 🎧 Listen to the full episode
Resilient Supply Chain:
Your Warehouse Says 98% Accurate. So Where Are Those 2,000 Missing Pallets?
In this week's Resilient Supply Chain, I spoke with Phil Newsome, COO of Lazer Logistics, and Todd Boone, VP North America at Dexory, about the hidden operational failures that turn seemingly minor inventory errors and misplaced trailers into missed deliveries. What struck me was how often businesses throw more labour at bottlenecks when the real problem is that nobody has a reliable picture of what's happening between the warehouse and the yard.
Key Highlights:
Hidden errors: Even 98% inventory accuracy means 2,000 potentially incorrect locations in a warehouse with 100,000 storage positions.
Automation: Autonomous warehouse scanning can inspect an entire facility daily, compared with roughly 5-6% using conventional manual cycle counting.
Smarter operations: Connecting warehouse inventory data with real-time yard visibility helps operators anticipate congestion, reduce wasted movements and prevent delivery failures.
Why This Matters: Supply chain resilience increasingly depends on identifying operational problems before they cascade, rather than spending more on people and equipment to compensate for poor information.
Kismet: In a 350,000-square-foot warehouse with 25,000 storage locations, manually achieving the visibility of a daily autonomous scan could require an additional 15-20 employees. Sometimes the smartest productivity investment isn't another forklift or another person. It's knowing where everything actually is! 🎧 Listen to the full episode
Don’t forget to follow the podcasts in your podcast app of choice to ensure you don’t miss any episodes.
Featured Chart(s)
Electric buses are now100% of bus sales in China!
EV sales continue to boom as more and more people realise their advantages
Renewables can generate pretty much everywhere
Africa’s now rolling out lots of solar - seems like a no-brainer!
Misc stuff
Russia’s war on Ukraine is costing them massively for very little gain
Black Opspspspsps - love it!!!
Mandatory Trump Cartoon
Trump funding the war on Ukraine is outrageous
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
Sun giving this guy a shoulder rub!
Your meetings, inside Claude and ChatGPT
Last week's customer call has the details your proposal needs. Right now they're buried in notes nobody can find.
Wispr Flow Notetaker captures your meetings with names, numbers, and product terms spelled right, then brings them into Claude or ChatGPT through a built-in connector. Ask Claude to draft the proposal from your last three calls with a prospect, or pull together what the deal team said about pricing this quarter.
Need something from a call in March? Ask one question across every meeting you've had and get the answer with citations. Get Wispr Flow Notetaker, free to try on Mac and Windows.