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Hey everyone, it’s Thursday, and FutureProof is back.
The title this week is: War Cuts Oil Demand, EV Batteries Refuse to Die, and ChatGPT Gets a Body
A war ostensibly about energy is helping suppress oil demand. EV sales keep climbing despite the tireless obituaries, existing batteries are ageing remarkably well, and OpenAI has apparently decided ChatGPT needs eyes, ears, and something resembling a body. Shorter edition than usual this week as I’m under a bit of pressure on other fronts!
Highlights this week:
Climate: war cuts global oil demand, Europe plans to become an “electro-continent”, and China pushes renewable power deeper into factories, transport, and data centres
AI: Claude tackles teachers’ paperwork, OpenAI builds a screenless home companion, and I explain why AI is infrastructure rather than weightless software
EVs: global sales reach two million in a month, real-world batteries retain more than 97% of their capacity, and CATL claims 1,500 kilometres of range
Clean energy and storage: Chinese green-tech exports surge, BYD lands an 11.28 GWh Abu Dhabi battery contract, and Huawei quietly builds an $11 billion energy empire
Supply chains: this week’s Resilient Supply Chain roundtable asks why autonomous trucks cannot fix dysfunctional yards — and how electric equipment delivering 98% uptime changes operations first
On Sunday, my adopted home country Spain face Argentina in the World Cup final. I’ll be cheering on La Roja with a cerveza fria and precisely none of the calm detachment expected of a neutral analyst.
Vamos España.
Let’s get into it.
Climate
Oil Demand Is Falling — But Don’t Pop the Champagne Yet
Global oil demand is forecast to shrink by one million barrels a day in 2026, its first annual fall since the pandemic. The irony is hard to miss: a war ostensibly bound up with energy security is helping suppress demand for the very commodity at its centre, and however grim the cause, fewer barrels burned still means fewer emissions.
Key Highlights
The IEA expects global oil demand to fall by one million barrels per day this year.
Disruption around the Strait of Hormuz has hammered Middle Eastern production, refining and exports.
Rising supply elsewhere could return the market to surplus later this year, provided the fighting genuinely subsides - an assumption currently wobblier than a three-legged bar stool.
Why This Matters: Oil dependence turns regional conflict into global inflation, supply-chain disruption and economic risk; electrification increasingly looks less like climate virtue and more like basic strategic competence.
Kismet: A falling demand number can still accompany an oil-security crisis, proof that consuming less petroleum and becoming less vulnerable to it are related, but emphatically not the same thing. 👉 Full story here
Europe Wants to Become an “Electro-Continent” - Finally!
The EU is preparing a legally binding 2040 electrification target, betting that clean, home-grown electricity can slash fossil-fuel imports, cut energy costs and rebuild industrial competitiveness. About time: Europe has spent years treating electrification as climate policy when it is increasingly economic policy, industrial policy and national security rolled into one.
Key Highlights
Faster electrification could replace two-thirds of EU gas demand and halve oil consumption.
The shift could cut Europe’s fossil-fuel import bill by €200 billion by the end of the 2030s.
Brussels plans action across industry, buildings and transport, including heat pumps, heavy-duty EVs, charging infrastructure and cleaner ports.
Why This Matters: Europe cannot regulate its way to energy independence; it needs to replace imported molecules with locally generated electrons, at speed and at scale.
Kismet: Despite its vast clean-energy ambitions, electricity still supplies just 23% of Europe’s final energy use, well behind China, Korea and Japan. 👉 Full story here
China Built the Clean-Energy Machine. Now It Plans to Switch It On
And speaking of China - it is shifting from simply installing absurd quantities of wind and solar to wiring that power directly into factories, data centres, transport and industrial parks. The plan remains frustratingly accommodating of coal, but the direction is unmistakable: electrification is becoming the operating system of the Chinese economy.
Key Highlights
Renewable electricity will be pushed deeper into manufacturing, data centres, transport, storage and low-carbon industrial parks.
China’s CO₂ emissions edged down in 2025, helped by record clean-energy deployment and electric vehicles, including long-distance trucks.
Coal remains the system’s backstop, while green hydrogen and renewable power begin replacing fossil fuels in heavy industry and even oil and gas operations.
Why This Matters: While Europe debates becoming an electro-continent, China is already building the supply chains, infrastructure and industrial demand that could make electrification its decisive competitive advantage.
Kismet: China now plans to use renewable electricity to extract oil and gas, a wonderfully strange transitional step in which clean energy helps produce the fuels it is steadily replacing. 👉 Full story here
AI News
Claude Wants to Do Teachers’ Homework - At 4pm, Every Day
Anthropic is giving verified US K–12 teachers a year of free Claude access, connected to academic standards, trusted curricula and widely used classroom tools. More interestingly, it can analyse class data, adapt lessons for different learners and automatically review daily assessments while the teacher drives home, exactly the sort of practical AI deployment education badly needs.
Key Highlights
Claude can build lesson plans and student materials grounded in state standards and established curricula.
Integrations with Canva, Diffit, MagicSchool and other education platforms turn it into part of the existing teaching workflow rather than another isolated chatbot.
Teachers can schedule recurring tasks, such as reviewing daily exit tickets and adjusting the following day’s lesson automatically.
Why This Matters: AI’s biggest educational contribution may be giving overstretched teachers the time and capacity to deliver the personalised instruction research already shows works.
Kismet: Anthropic will pilot Claude in Detroit schools and assess teacher wellbeing alongside classroom practice, because the most valuable output may be an educator getting an evening back. 👉 Full story here
OpenAI Wants to Put ChatGPT in Your Home - With Eyes, Ears and a Personality
OpenAI’s first consumer device is reportedly a portable, screenless AI speaker that can see its surroundings, control the home and grow increasingly proactive as it learns about its owner. It is a bold attempt to move AI beyond the laptop - although persuading people to welcome an email-reading camera into the bedroom may prove harder than the engineering.
Key Highlights
The rechargeable device can move between rooms, answer questions, handle messages, play media and control connected appliances.
Cameras, sensors and GPT-Live will help it interpret context, converse more naturally and anticipate what its owner needs.
OpenAI plans to reveal it in 2026 ahead of a possible 2027 release, though Apple’s trade-secrets lawsuit could delay the launch.
Why This Matters: The next major computing platform may be ambient rather than screen-based, but whichever company earns permission to observe, remember and act inside our homes will need extraordinary levels of trust.
Kismet: The speaker will reportedly contain moving mechanical parts intended to make it appear alive - just what we all wanted. 👉 Full story here
Electromobility
EV Sales Keep Rising. The “Slowdown” Is Mostly in the Headlines
Global EV registrations rose for a fourth consecutive month in June, reaching two million vehicles and climbing 7% year on year. Europe delivered a thumping 31% increase, more than offsetting temporary weakness in China and North America, because a global transition does not require every market to break records simultaneously.
Key Highlights
Global battery-electric and plug-in hybrid registrations reached two million in June, up 7% from a year earlier.
European sales surged 31% to roughly 530,000 vehicles, a record for the month.
China and North America declined, but worldwide demand still grew, showing an increasingly broad and resilient market.
Why This Matters: EV adoption is continuing its relentless global rise, even as growth shifts between regions and policy changes create temporary bumps in individual markets.
Kismet: Softer sales inside China are pushing its carmakers harder into international markets, so one country’s dip may accelerate electrification everywhere else. 👉 Full story here
Today’s EV Batteries Barely Degrade. Tomorrow’s May Drive 1,500 Kilometres
Nearly 10,000 real-world battery tests found modern EV packs retaining astonishing amounts of capacity, with the Kia e-Niro and Hyundai Kona still above 97% after 100,000 kilometres. Meanwhile, CATL is claiming a solid-state sedan battery capable of 1,500 kilometres on one charge - unverified for now, yes, but a useful reminder that the technology critics insist is inadequate keeps improving at an indecent pace.
Key Highlights
The Kia e-Niro retained an average 97.25% of its original battery capacity after 100,000 kilometres, narrowly beating the Hyundai Kona Electric.
Every vehicle in the study’s top 20 retained more than 91% capacity, demolishing the notion that EV batteries routinely fall off a chemical cliff.
CATL claims its forthcoming 180 kWh solid-state system could deliver 1,500 kilometres of range, although independent testing, pricing and a production timetable remain conspicuously absent. For now.
Why This Matters: Existing EV batteries are already lasting far better than public mythology suggests, while the technologies approaching production promise still greater range, safety and durability.
Kismet: The battery-health champion is the Kia e-Niro - proof that quietly competent engineering can outperform far louder automotive marketing. 👉 Links Inline
Clean Energy
China Isn’t Just Building the Energy Transition. It’s Selling It to Everyone Else
China’s clean-tech exports surged by more than a third in the first half of 2026, as batteries, wind equipment and EVs met rising global demand for cheaper, more secure energy. BYD is now supplying an enormous 11.28 GWh storage system in Abu Dhabi, while Huawei, supposedly a telecoms company, has quietly assembled an $11 billion clean-energy business spanning solar inverters, batteries and EV charging.
Key Highlights
Chinese exports of lithium batteries rose 38%, wind turbines climbed 36%, and private-sector shipments of EVs, batteries and solar products jumped 46%.
BYD will supply 11.28 GWh of battery storage for an Abu Dhabi project combining 5.2 GW of solar with 19 GWh of storage to deliver renewable electricity around the clock.
Huawei Digital Power generated more than $11 billion last year and has become the world’s leading solar-inverter supplier, alongside a growing storage and charging business (my own home solar inverter is a Huawei inverter).
Why This Matters: China treated decarbonisation as an industrial opportunity while much of the West treated it as a regulatory burden - and the resulting lead now reaches far beyond solar panels and electric cars.
Kismet: US sanctions helped accelerate Huawei’s expansion into clean energy, meaning an attempt to constrain one Chinese technology giant may have pushed it deeper into one of the century’s largest growth markets. 👉 Links Inline
Latest blog post
AI Is Not Software. It Is Infrastructure - And the Grid Has Opinions
AI is still discussed as if it floats serenely in the cloud, but every model sits on land, consumes electricity and water, depends on strained hardware supply chains, and requires permission from communities, regulators, customers and employees. My latest article argues that sustainability must move into AI strategy before contracts are signed, because physical systems do not negotiate with PowerPoint.
Key Highlights
Global data-centre electricity demand could more than double to roughly 945 TWh by 2030, while shortages of transformers and other grid equipment are already producing lead times of up to 160 weeks.
AI procurement should examine power sourcing, water exposure, hardware lifecycles, emissions, vendor concentration and community acceptance - not merely licence fees and promised productivity.
Companies should prioritise high-value workloads, combine AI infrastructure with renewables, storage and flexibility, and use AI itself to improve sustainability data and supplier engagement.
Why This Matters: The organisations that win with AI will not deploy the most tools; they will deploy the right tools where energy, water, infrastructure and social licence allow them to create durable value.
Kismet: The most important constraint on tomorrow’s artificial intelligence may turn out to be something profoundly unintelligent: a transformer stuck in a three-year manufacturing queue. 👉 Full story here
Climate Confident:
Resilient Supply Chain:
An Autonomous Truck Does Not Make an Autonomous Yard
In this week’s Resilient Supply Chain roundtable, Matt Yearling of YMX Logistics, Chad Fox of Miebach Consulting, and Kurt Neutgens of Orange EV explain why visibility without ownership, reliable equipment and disciplined processes is merely a more expensive way to watch problems happen. The standout number for me: replacing diesel yard trucks operating at roughly 80% uptime with electric equipment reaching 97–98% can transform execution before AI or autonomy even gets through the gate.
Key Highlights
The most damaging execution failures occur at the handoffs between warehouse, yard and transport systems, where responsibility is often impressively vague.
Successful automation begins with standardised processes, clean event-level data and clear decision rights - not a shiny dashboard looking for a problem.
Electric yard trucks can eliminate fuelling downtime, reduce maintenance disruption and provide the reliability needed for wider optimisation.
Why This Matters: Autonomy is the final layer, not the foundation; businesses must first make equipment, processes, data and accountability boringly dependable.
Kismet: Orange EV’s first electric yard truck, delivered in 2015 after its previous diesel life ended at the roadside, is still operating more than a decade later — apparently reincarnation is easier for trucks than for most corporate transformation programmes. 🎧 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)
It is hard to beat the economics of solar!
Here in Spain, we’re powering ahead (pun intended!)
Solar and storage are kicking gas out of the Californian grid - we can do it!
And EVs are a big cause of oil demand destruction
Misc stuff
Claude’s version numbers are rapidly catching up!!!
This made me chuckle
Obligatory Trump Cartoon
Not a lot needs to be said about this one!
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! ***
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