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Hey everyone, it’s Thursday, FutureProof is here, and this week has a strong “markets beat speeches” vibe.
Trump is backing coal.
Solar just beat coal.
His fossil war is pushing fuel prices higher, while EVs, renewables, batteries, and public transport quietly get more attractive. Funny how that works.
Highlights this week:
Fossil fuels: war-fuelled volatility makes clean tech look sensible
Clean energy: solar beats coal, and Europe doubles down on renewables
EVs: China dumps petrol from its top ten, Mexico goes low-cost, and trucks become grid batteries
AI: Siri wakes up, Gemini translates live, and OpenAI eyes the everything app
Podcasts: flow batteries meet energy security, and returns reveal hidden margin
Some weeks whisper.
This one arrived with receipts, irony, and a very uncomfortable coal lobby.
Let’s get into it.
Climate
Gas Is Losing Its Grip, And Renewables Are Doing The Finger-Prising
Gas is still generating plenty of electricity globally, but the story has shifted: its share of the power mix has now fallen for five years in a row, while solar and wind are increasingly eating the demand growth gas used to claim as its birthright. I love this because it reframes gas from “bridge fuel” to “expensive, geopolitically twitchy backup plan”, which is quite the demotion for a fuel that once strutted around like it owned the grid.
Key Highlights
Gas’s share of global electricity fell from 23.9% in 2020 to 21.8% in 2025, despite gas generation still creeping up in absolute terms.
Solar alone grew by 636 TWh in 2025, 17 times more than gas, and met around 75% of global electricity demand growth. Subtle as a brick through a fossil-fuel lobbyist’s window.
Renewables almost caught gas in the G7 in 2025, generating 2,544 TWh versus gas at 2,577 TWh, helping clean power overtake fossil power across the bloc.
Why This Matters: Gas is no longer the obvious default for meeting rising electricity demand; renewables, storage, grids, and flexibility are turning it into a shrinking, riskier, increasingly tactical piece of the power system.
Kismet: Nearly half of all gas-generating economies, 61 out of 124, have already passed their gas power peak, which is less “future transition” and more “quietly happened while everyone was arguing on LinkedIn.” 👉 Full story here
Europe Wants Foreign Flights To Pay For Their Pollution. Imagine That.
The EU is preparing to extend carbon charges to foreign airlines flying into and out of Europe, and frankly, it’s about time aviation stopped treating the atmosphere like a complimentary overhead locker. If this lands, revenue from the expanded Emissions Trading System could help fund Europe’s clean energy transition, while airlines enjoy the ancient corporate ritual of complaining loudly about being asked to pay for consequences.
Key Highlights
The EU wants to expand its Emissions Trading System so foreign airlines pay for emissions from flights into and out of Europe.
The proposal is part of a wider ETS reform linked to the EU’s planned 90% emissions cut by 2040.
Airlines and airports are already pushing back, warning about competitiveness, because apparently physics should wait politely while margins have a think.
Why This Matters: Aviation has long been one of climate policy’s slipperiest sectors, and bringing more international flights into carbon pricing would make pollution costs harder to dodge, while giving Europe more cash for clean energy.
Kismet: The EU first tried to pull international aviation fully into its carbon market back in 2012, but backed down after pressure from China, the US, Brazil, and airlines, so this is less a new idea than a climate policy zombie finally learning to walk again. 👉 Full story here
AI News
Apple Finally Gives Siri A Brain. Possibly Even A Personality.
Apple used WWDC this year to unveil Siri AI, a rebuilt assistant with personal context, onscreen awareness, web knowledge, visual intelligence, and deeper app actions, which is corporate-speak for “Siri may finally stop behaving like a confused toaster with Wi-Fi.” What caught my attention, though, wasn’t just the shinier assistant; it was Apple opening its Foundation Models framework to developers, including free Private Cloud Compute access for smaller app makers, because putting useful AI inside everyday apps may matter far more than another chatbot floating around pretending to be your intern.
Key Highlights
Siri AI is being rebuilt around Apple Intelligence, with conversational answers, personal context across messages, emails, photos, and apps, plus onscreen awareness.
Apple is expanding Visual Intelligence across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro, letting users ask questions about what they see on camera, screen, or in spatial computing.
Developers get major AI upgrades too, including Apple Foundation Models, free Private Cloud Compute access for smaller developers, image input support, third-party model integration, and an open-source release later this summer.
Why This Matters: Apple’s AI play is less about shouting “look, chatbot!” and more about embedding intelligence into the operating system layer where work, communication, photos, writing, search, and apps already live.
Kismet: Apple says Siri AI won’t initially be available on iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch in the EU because of regulatory hurdles, which is convenient, but also a little rich: the EU rules didn’t fall from the sky last Tuesday. Apple has known the direction of travel for years and still chose to ship this as a pressure tactic dressed up as product limitation. Carbon-neutral packaging, meet blame-neutral politics. 👉 Full story here
Google Just Put A Babel Fish In Your Pocket
Google’s Gemini 3.5 Live Translate brings near real-time speech-to-speech translation across 70+ languages, preserving tone, pace, pitch, and enough conversational flow to make “Sorry, can you repeat that?” slightly less of a global business model. I’m fascinated by this one because it’s AI at its best: practical, connective, quietly enormous, and not just another chatbot wearing a productivity lanyard.
Key Highlights
Gemini 3.5 Live Translate automatically detects 70+ languages and produces continuous translated speech just a few seconds behind the speaker.
It is rolling out through the Gemini Live API, Google AI Studio, Google Translate on Android and iOS, and private preview for select Google Meet business customers (even in the EU!).
Google Meet translation is jumping from five languages to 70+, with more than 2,000 language combinations possible in a single meeting, which is mildly more impressive than asking everyone to “just speak English”.
Why This Matters: Real-time, natural voice translation could make global collaboration, travel, education, healthcare, logistics, and customer support far more inclusive, because language barriers are inefficient, exclusionary, and frankly a ridiculous thing for civilisation to still be tripping over.
Kismet: Google says all audio generated by the model is watermarked with SynthID, meaning the translated voice output carries an imperceptible AI marker, a small but important admission that magical voice tech also needs guardrails before someone inevitably uses it to make fake nonsense at industrial scale. 👉 Full story here
OpenAI Wants ChatGPT To Become The Everything App
OpenAI is reportedly planning the biggest ChatGPT overhaul since launch, turning it from a clever answer box into a superapp for coding, agents, image generation, partner apps, and business workflows, because apparently “chatbot” was merely the larval stage. What jumped out at me is the hard commercial pivot: ChatGPT may have nearly a billion users, but the real money is in businesses, Codex, agents, and tools that actually do things rather than politely describing the things.
Key Highlights
OpenAI is reportedly redesigning ChatGPT to push users more clearly into coding tools, AI agents, image generation, and partner apps from companies such as Canva and Booking.com.
Codex has apparently grown to more than 5 million weekly active users, with most users paying, making coding one of OpenAI’s clearest paths to higher-margin revenue.
Business customers already account for roughly 40% of OpenAI revenue, and the company expects that to rise to 50% by the end of the year.
Why This Matters: The AI race is moving from “who has the smartest chatbot?” to “who owns the interface where work actually happens?”, and that has massive implications for software, search, enterprise IT, app stores, procurement, and every SaaS vendor currently pretending this is someone else’s problem.
Kismet: One senior OpenAI employee reportedly said “chat is dead”, which is wonderfully awkward for a company whose most famous product is literally called ChatGPT, but also probably right: the next fight is agents, not answers. 👉 Full story here
Electromobility
China’s Petrol Cars Just Got Booted Out Of The Top Ten
China’s EV transition has hit another delicious milestone: in May, not a single petrol-only car appeared in third-party rankings of the country’s ten best-selling passenger vehicles, with every spot going to either a battery-electric or plug-in hybrid model. This isn’t some vague “future of mobility” fog machine either; new energy vehicles now account for 62.9% of China’s retail passenger car sales, BYD thinks that could soon push towards 80%, and petrol cars are starting to look less like incumbents and more like guests who missed the hint to leave.
Key Highlights
For the first time, no petrol-only model appeared in China’s May top-ten passenger car retail rankings from Autohome and Autodext.
New energy vehicles, meaning battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars, reached 62.9% of retail passenger car sales in China in May, the third month in a row above 60%.
BYD’s Stella Li says China could soon reach close to 80% EV penetration, helped by fast-charging, battery advances, and a ludicrously competitive domestic market.
Why This Matters: China is no longer merely “leading” on EV adoption; it is stress-testing what happens when electric mobility becomes the mainstream car market, with huge consequences for oil demand, supply chains, automakers, charging networks, and industrial policy everywhere else.
Kismet: Petrol cars still made up 37.1% of China’s market by volume in May, but they were responsible for 82% of the total year-on-year sales decline, which is less “slow transition” and more “the floorboards are making worrying noises.” 👉 Full story here
Mexico’s $8,000 EV Could Be The Little Car That Makes A Big Point
Mexico has unveiled the Olinia Uno, its first nationally designed and developed electric vehicle, a compact six-passenger urban EV expected to go on sale in summer 2027 for around 150,000 pesos, or roughly $8,000. I like this because it’s not chasing absurd bonnet length, leather nonsense, or “executive presence”; it is aiming at short-distance urban mobility, wheelchair accessibility, lower running costs, and domestic industrial capability, which is a refreshingly sane use of technology in a car market still occasionally obsessed with building battery-powered rhinoceroses.
Key Highlights
The Olinia Uno is Mexico’s first electric vehicle designed and developed domestically, backed by government support and built by CSP Olinia.
It is expected to start commercial sales in summer 2027 at around $8,000, with a 14.7 kWh battery, more than 77 miles of range, and a top speed of 31 mph.
The vehicle currently has 50% domestic content, with plans to raise that to 75%, as Mexico tries to move beyond assembly and into home-grown EV technology.
Why This Matters: Affordable, right-sized EVs could be far more important for real-world decarbonisation than premium models, especially in dense cities where short trips, operating costs, accessibility, and local manufacturing matter more than 0–60 theatre.
Kismet: After the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the project plans to reveal an Olinia Cargo version for freight, which could turn this from a cute national EV story into a last-mile logistics play with proper urban emissions impact. 👉 Full story here
Scania Just Turned Electric Trucks Into Grid Batteries On Wheels
Scania has demonstrated bidirectional charging for heavy electric trucks using the Megawatt Charging System, meaning a truck can draw power from the grid and send it back when needed, rather than sitting in a depot like an expensive metal cow chewing electrons. This is great because it moves electric freight from “zero-emission transport” into something much more interesting: fleets as flexible energy assets, capable of cutting costs, soaking up solar, supporting local grids, and making diesel look even more like a one-trick fossil pony.
Key Highlights
Scania says its demo is one of the first examples of vehicle-to-grid functionality using Megawatt Charging System technology for heavy commercial vehicles.
The setup reached charging rates of up to 1,000 amps and 750kW, while enabling real-time communication between truck, charger, and energy management systems.
Depot charging is likely the first practical use case, since trucks often sit parked between shifts and could store cheap or renewable electricity, then return power during demand peaks.
Why This Matters: Electric trucks could strengthen the business case for fleet electrification by reducing emissions, lowering energy costs, improving use of depot solar, and turning parked vehicles into controllable grid resources that can generate revenue by providing energy services to the grid.
Kismet: The same high-power charging interface used to shove energy into a truck at industrial speed can also be used to send energy back out, which means tomorrow’s freight depots may behave less like car parks and more like distributed power plants with tyres. 👉 Full story here
Clean Energy
Trump Subsidises The Steam Age While Europe Builds Tomorrow’s Grid
While Trump is throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at ageing coal plants and yelling at “windmills” like a man losing an argument with a weather forecast, Europe is moving in the other direction: lower taxes on clean electricity, more smart meters, more grid flexibility, and a €23bn Italian renewables scheme. One side is trying to revive the ancient past with emergency powers; the other is trying to cut bills, reduce fossil fuel imports, and make the grid fit for the century we are, inconveniently, already living in.
Key Highlights
Trump announced major support for the US coal industry, including help for existing coal plants, new facilities, mining operations, and export infrastructure.
The EU is preparing plans to cut taxes on renewable electricity, expand smart meter deployment, and make power systems more flexible to reduce costs and wasted clean energy.
Brussels also cleared Italy’s €23bn renewables support scheme, which aims to add 37.15GW of new wind, solar, hydropower, and sewage gas capacity.
Why This Matters: Energy policy is now industrial strategy, inflation strategy, security strategy, and climate strategy all at once, and backing yesterday’s fuel system while competitors build cleaner, cheaper, more flexible power is not toughness; it is nostalgia wearing a hard hat.
Kismet:The EU estimates recent fossil fuel price shocks are adding €500m per day to Europe’s energy import bill, which is a fairly expensive reminder that “energy independence” means building home-grown renewables, not sending more money to whichever crisis happens to be trending this week. 👉 Links Inline
Trump Throws Cash At Coal. Solar Beats It Anyway.
Despite Trump’s best efforts to polish coal’s gravestone and call it an energy strategy, solar has just overtaken coal in US electricity generation for the first time in a calendar month. In May, solar supplied 12.8% of US electricity versus coal’s 12.2%, because economics, unlike certain politicians, can still read a cost curve.
Key Highlights
Solar generated 12.8% of US electricity in May, beating coal at 12.2% for the first time in a full month.
Solar output rose 17% year-on-year, while coal generation fell 11%, which is what market transition looks like when it stops asking permission.
Solar and battery storage made up 91% of new US generating capacity in the first quarter, because developers appear to prefer assets that can actually get built this century.
Why This Matters: The US may be trying to prop up coal politically, but utilities, data centre developers, investors, and grid planners are following the maths: solar plus storage is fast, cheap, modular, and increasingly indispensable.
Kismet: States won by Trump in 2024 accounted for 74% of all US solar capacity installed in Q1 2026, which is a delicious reminder that electrons don’t vote, they just follow economics. 👉 Full story here
Trump’s War on Iran
Trump’s Iran War Accidentally Became A Clean Energy Ad
Trump’s war on Iran is turning into a brutal live demonstration of fossil fuel fragility, with oil and gas price shocks hammering import-dependent economies while solar, batteries, EVs, heat pumps, and public transport suddenly look less like climate policy and more like basic financial self-defence. Europe’s fossil fuel import bill jumped by an extra €18.5bn in the first 60 days of the crisis, while Asian and European governments are now rushing to electrify, because apparently repeatedly setting fire to energy security is a poor long-term strategy. Who knew.
Key Highlights
Ember says fossil fuel price spikes from the Iran conflict cost Europe an additional €18.5bn in the first 60 days, exposing, yet again, the stupidity of relying on imported fuels priced by geopolitical chaos.
EVs in Europe avoided 67 million barrels of oil consumption in 2025, saving around €4.1bn in fossil import costs before the current crisis really started biting.
From the Philippines to France, Germany, Spain, South Korea, Vietnam, and beyond, governments and households are accelerating solar, batteries, heat pumps, EVs, and transit as fossil fuels become the world’s most expensive subscription service.
Why This Matters: The Iran shock is forcing energy security, affordability, and climate action into the same conversation, and the answer keeps pointing in one direction: electrify everything possible, power it with clean energy, and stop letting foreign crises invoice your economy every morning.
Kismet: One shipment of solar panels can generate electricity for 20 years, while producing the same amount of gas-fired electricity would require an LNG tanker every single year, which is a tidy little reminder that clean tech is infrastructure, while fossil fuel is dependency with a delivery schedule. 👉 Links Inline
Podcasts
Climate Confident:
The Battery That Could Make Clean Power Work Around The Clock
On this week’s Climate Confident, I spoke with Min Tang from Rongke Power about vanadium flow batteries, the long-duration storage technology that sounds niche until you realise it could help grids absorb more renewables, black-start after outages, support AI data centres, cut fossil fuel dependence, and last 25 years without losing capacity. The headline here isn’t “battery beats battery”; it’s that lithium is brilliant for cars and phones, while flow batteries may be what power systems need when the grid stops politely pretending two-hour storage solves everything.
Key Highlights
Vanadium flow batteries use a water-based electrolyte, making them far safer than lithium-ion for stationary storage, with no thermal runaway, fire, or explosion risk.
Rongke Power says its systems can last more than 25 years, run over 20,000 cycles, and retain 100% of their original capacity.
The company’s 100MW/400MWh Dalian project in China has demonstrated grid-scale black-start capability, showing that long-duration batteries can support resilience, not just arbitrage.
Why This Matters: As renewables scale, grids need storage that is safe, durable, flexible, and bankable over decades, and vanadium flow batteries could become a critical piece of that infrastructure puzzle.
Kismet: Min pointed out that vanadium flow battery electrolyte is about 60% water and can represent 40–80% of total battery cost, which means nobody sane wants to ship it around the world, creating a built-in push for local manufacturing, local supply chains, and energy security with fewer container ships full of very expensive liquid. 🎧 Listen to the full episode
Resilient Supply Chain:
Returns Are Hiding Margin. Retail Just Pretended Not To Notice.
On this week’s Resilient Supply Chain, I spoke with Terry Boyle, CEO of Trove, about reverse logistics, the bit of retail everyone quietly hopes someone else will deal with, ideally behind a warehouse door. Terry’s argument is brilliantly blunt: returns aren’t just a cost centre; handled intelligently, they can recover margin, fight fraud, improve inventory flow, support resale, and turn the “messy bit at the back” into a serious P&L lever.
Key Highlights
Terry reckons 4–5 percentage points of EBITDA improvement may be hiding in reverse logistics, which is not exactly loose change down the back of the corporate sofa.
Better returns processing can cut labour by 25–40%, improve return-to-stock rates, and move imperfect goods into resale or marketplaces before their value quietly evaporates.
Returns data can reveal product flaws, sizing issues, supplier quality problems, and fraud, including the wonderfully bleak reality of customers returning boxes of rocks.
Why This Matters: As e-commerce return rates climb, reverse logistics is becoming too financially important to treat as a warehouse afterthought, and too environmentally significant to leave buried under spreadsheets, stickers, and wishful thinking.
Kismet: Terry’s sharpest point may be that circularity scales faster when sold as inventory economics than climate action, which is mildly depressing, but also useful: saving the planet apparently works better when the CFO can see the margin recovery.
🎧 Listen to the full episode
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Renewables baby!!!
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Misc stuff
As an Irish guy living in Spain, I can confirm at least two of these!
This tracks!
This one appealed to my Dad sense of humour!
Love this one!
Obligatory Trump Cartoon
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