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Hey everyone, it’s Thursday, oil is panicking, and FutureProof is back.
This week is about exposure.
A war in a fossil-fuel choke point sends prices flying, and suddenly renewables, storage, electrification, and smarter grids look a lot less like climate policy and a lot more like common sense.
The big threads:
War spikes oil and gas, and makes fossil fuel dependence look exactly as risky as it is.
China’s new five-year plan shows clean energy is now industrial strategy as much as climate policy.
AI keeps moving into the real world, from wildfire prediction to health tools to smarter maps.
EVs keep stretching range, cutting oil demand, and making old arguments look increasingly threadbare.
Plus: Paris keeps proving the cleanest car is no car; Europe is buying more solar, heat pumps and EVs; and India gets a reminder that electrification matters in kitchens too.
And I’ve opened the full back catalogue of both podcasts to everyone, with the + subscriptions now shifting to bonus episodes every couple of weeks.
Let’s get into it.
Climate
War Makes Oil Panic. Renewables Make Sense. Again.
I don’t want to overstate the obvious, but launching yet another war in one of the world’s most fossil-fuel-critical regions has turned out to be a fairly efficient way to remind everyone that oil and gas are not energy security, they’re geopolitical exposure with a price tag. As strikes rattled infrastructure across the Gulf, oil spiked as high as $115, European gas prices surged, and even the IEA’s biggest-ever emergency oil release struggled to calm markets, all while the UN climate chief argued this should be the moment governments accelerate the shift away from fossil dependence, not backslide into it.
Brent crude surged above $100 and briefly hit $115, while European gas prices jumped sharply and Asian LNG prices climbed nearly 33%, after attacks on energy infrastructure in Iran and Qatar rattled markets and shipping routes.
The IEA warned this could amount to the largest oil supply disruption in history, with the war expected to cut the region’s oil and gas production by at least 10 million barrels a day, prompting the agency’s biggest-ever emergency reserve release. Even that didn’t stop prices rebounding.
The more useful lesson is the one some countries actually learned in the 1970s: Denmark built a wind industry, the Netherlands rethought urban transport, and the Nordics invested in efficiency and district heating. The UN climate chief is now making the same point in plainer language: fossil fuel dependence is a security risk, full stop.
Why This Matters: Every oil shock is a flashing neon sign telling governments and businesses the same thing: the fastest route to cheaper, stabler, more secure energy is to build more renewables, electrify faster, and stop pretending fossil dependence is prudence.
Kismet: One of the clearest winners from the first oil crisis was Denmark’s wind sector, which got its early push in the 1970s when a teenager named Henrik Stiesdal built one of the country’s first turbines from junkyard parts, helping set in motion an industry that now powers a country getting 91% of its electricity from renewables. 👉 Links Inline
China’s New Five-Year Plan Doubles Down on Clean Energy
China’s latest five-year plan makes one thing clear: clean energy is now core to its economic and geopolitical strategy. There’s still a coal caveat, because apparently no major power can resist a contradictory energy policy, but the direction of travel is unmistakable: more renewables, more electrification, more grid investment, and more clean tech manufacturing.
China added 446GW of renewables in 2025, more than the rest of the world combined, and the new plan keeps that momentum going with more backing for clean power, electrification, smart grids and green fuels.
It aims to cut carbon intensity by 17% between 2026 and 2030 and raise non-fossil energy’s share of total consumption from 21.7% to 25%.
With around 70% of its oil imported, China is using renewables and EVs not just to cut emissions, but to reduce exposure to fossil fuel volatility.
Why This Matters: China is treating clean energy less as climate policy and more as industrial strategy, and that should worry any country still treating the transition as optional.
Kismet: The most disruptive part may not be the targets, but the price effect, because if China keeps scaling clean tech at this pace, it won’t just export products, it’ll export cost curves that make fossil fuels look increasingly absurd. 👉 Full story here
Why Gas Still Sets Power Prices, and How We Fix It
Even when renewables generate a big share of electricity, gas often still sets the price because the last and most expensive plant needed to meet demand sets the market rate. The fix isn’t some miraculous pricing hack. It’s more renewables, more storage, more grid build-out, and more fixed-price clean power so gas gets pushed out of the driver’s seat.
In marginal pricing markets, the final generator needed to meet demand sets the price, and that’s often gas.
Alternative pricing models exist, but most bring fresh problems, uncertainty, or haven’t been proven at scale.
The most effective fix is reducing how often gas is needed at all, by adding more clean power, storage, and stronger grids.
Why This Matters: If gas keeps setting electricity prices, fossil fuel volatility keeps rippling through the whole economy, even when clean power is doing most of the work.
Kismet: One of the stranger truths in power markets is that a tiny slice of gas generation can still dictate the price for everyone else, which is a bit like letting the slowest person in the office set the pace for the entire company. 👉 Full story here
AI News
Can AI Help Predict Where Wildfires Spread Next?
It looks like it can help, yes, but it’s not ready to take the wheel on its own. Researchers at the University at Buffalo found that AI models can add speed, flexibility and better use of real-time data to wildfire forecasting, though traditional physics-based models still outperform them on overall accuracy.
Researchers tested five open-source deep learning models on more than a decade of Hawaii wildfire data, then compared the best performers against FARSITE using the 2023 Maui fires as a case study.
The top AI models performed well, especially in flexibility and use of diverse inputs like weather, vegetation and satellite data, but FARSITE still achieved the best overall balance of precision and recall.
The most promising path now looks like hybrid modelling, combining physics-based fire science with AI’s ability to ingest fresher, more dynamic data.
Why This Matters: As wildfires get more intense and less predictable, better forecasting could give emergency teams crucial extra hours to respond and reduce damage.
Kismet: One of the more interesting details here is that the AI models flagged temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind and vegetation as the main drivers of fire spread in Maui, which means the system isn’t just guessing, it’s starting to show its workings too. 👉 Full story here
Microsoft Wants to Turn Your Health Data Into Something Actually Useful
Microsoft’s new Copilot Health is aiming at a very real problem: people are drowning in health data and still starved of understanding. The pitch is simple, and surprisingly sensible. Pull together your records, wearables, lab results and health history, then use AI to turn the mess into something coherent enough to help you ask better questions and make better decisions. Which, frankly, is more useful than another app telling you that you slept badly and should perhaps consider sleeping more.
Copilot Health brings together data from wearables, hospital records, lab results and health history into one secure space to generate more personalised and actionable insights.
Microsoft says it already answers over 50 million consumer health questions a day, and Copilot Health will lean on vetted sources, clinical oversight, provider search, and clear citations rather than just freewheeling chatbot confidence.
It’s launching cautiously, first in US English for adults, with strong privacy claims including no model training on user data, isolated conversations, and the ability to disconnect data sources instantly.
Why This Matters: If done well, this could shift health AI from generic symptom-search theatre to something far more useful: helping people make sense of their own data before they ever step into a clinic.
Kismet: The really striking bit is Microsoft’s bigger ambition here, because it openly frames this as a step towards “medical superintelligence”, a phrase that sounds like marketing fever dream until you realise it’s really about building AI that blends the breadth of a GP with the depth of a specialist. 👉 Full story here
Google Maps Gets an AI Upgrade, and This One Might Actually Be Useful
Google is stuffing more of its Gemini AI into Maps, and for once it sounds less like a gimmick and more like a genuinely practical upgrade. The new features let users ask more natural, messy, real-world questions, while a redesigned navigation mode adds richer 3D visuals, clearer lane guidance, and more context about what’s coming next on the road.
“Ask Maps” lets users ask conversational questions like where to charge a phone without queuing for coffee, or find a public tennis court with lights, then builds a personalised map around the answer.
Google says the system draws on information from more than 300 million places and over 500 million contributors, while also factoring in your saved places and preferences.
A new “Immersive Navigation” mode adds 3D route views, better lane and turn guidance, smarter alternate route trade-offs, and clearer destination details including entrances and parking.
Why This Matters: This is a glimpse of where consumer AI may actually earn its keep, not by being flashy, but by making everyday decisions faster, clearer, and less annoying.
Kismet: Google says Maps processes more than 5 million traffic updates every second, which means the app you mostly use to avoid wrong turns is quietly operating at a planetary scale that would have sounded absurdly futuristic not that long ago. 👉 Full story here
Electromobility
BMW’s New i3 Claims 900km of Range. Seven Years Ago That Was Unimaginable.
BMW has unveiled a new all-electric i3 sedan with a stated range of up to 900km WLTP, which is a useful reminder of just how brutally fast EV tech is improving. I bought my first full EV in 2018 and it struggled to reach it’s claimed 250km range. Now mainstream premium models are flirting with intercity range anxiety extinction. Not bad for a technology critics keep insisting is about to fail any minute now.
The new BMW i3 50 xDrive is quoted at up to 900km WLTP from a 100.8 kWh battery pack.
BMW says it can add almost 250 miles of range in 10 minutes on a fast DC charger, using an 800V architecture and up to 400kW charging.
It also includes bidirectional charging, with vehicle-to-load, vehicle-to-house and vehicle-to-grid functionality.
Why This Matters: EV progress is no longer incremental, it’s compounding, and cars like this make it harder and harder to pretend range is still the big blocker.
Kismet: The sneaky big deal here may be the bidirectional charging, because once cars become giant batteries on wheels, they stop being just transport and start becoming part of the energy system. 👉 Full story here
EVs Are Now Killing 2.3 Million Barrels of Oil Demand Every Day
One of the least appreciated things about EVs is that they’re not just cleaner cars, they’re demand destruction machines for oil. BloombergNEF says EVs avoided the use of 2.3 million barrels of oil per day in 2025, and that figure could more than double by 2030. So while oil markets are once again throwing one of their regular geopolitical tantrums, EVs are quietly making the whole system less powerful.
BloombergNEF estimates EVs avoided 2.3 million barrels of oil demand per day in 2025.
That could rise to 5.25 million barrels per day by 2030 as EV adoption keeps growing.
China, Europe and India are already seeing major savings on oil imports, while two- and three-wheel EVs are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in cutting fuel use.
Why This Matters: EVs aren’t just a transport story anymore, they’re becoming a serious macroeconomic and energy security story too.
Kismet: One of the smartest twists in this story is that the biggest oil savings aren’t coming only from flashy premium EVs, but from humble electric scooters and motorbikes in developing countries, quietly chipping away at oil demand at massive scale. 👉 Full story here
The Cleanest Car Is No Car. Paris Is Proving It
Of course the least polluting car is no car, and Paris is showing what happens when a city actually acts like it believes that. By cutting car traffic, expanding cycle lanes, and reclaiming streets for people, Paris has become one of the clearest examples anywhere that better urban mobility is not about swapping every petrol car for an EV, it’s about needing fewer cars in the first place.
Paris cut car traffic by more than half between 2002 and 2023.
The city expanded cycle lanes sixfold, helping bikes overtake cars for everyday trips.
The result has been cleaner air, less noise, fewer accidents, and more liveable public space.
Why This Matters: EVs are a huge step forward, but the biggest transport win of all is building cities where people don’t need a car to live well.
Kismet: Cars are parked around 95% of the time, which means cities have spent decades devoting enormous amounts of valuable space to storing idle machines instead of people, trees, homes, or literally anything more useful. 👉 Full story here
Clean Energy
Europe’s Answer to Oil Shock: More Solar, More EVs, More Heat Pumps
The Iran war has done what years of policy arguments often fail to do: make the cost of fossil fuel dependence brutally obvious. Across Europe, governments and households are responding in the most rational way available, by accelerating towards solar, EVs, heat pumps and homegrown clean power, while Spain is quietly showing what happens when you build that system before the crisis hits.
In the UK and Germany, consumer interest in rooftop solar, heat pumps and EVs has jumped since the war began, with Octopus seeing solar enquiries up 27% and Germany’s Enpal reporting roughly 30% higher demand for solar and heat pumps.
EU leaders are increasingly framing renewables not just as climate policy, but as sovereignty policy, with fossil fuel price spikes already costing the bloc an extra €6 billion in imports and reinforcing the need to electrify faster.
Spain is the standout proof point: after doubling wind and solar capacity since 2019, it now has some of Europe’s cheapest electricity, with gas setting power prices only 15% of the time this year versus 89% in Italy.
Why This Matters: Every fossil fuel shock now does the sales job for clean energy, because renewables are no longer just the lower-carbon option, they’re increasingly the lower-risk, lower-cost, more strategically sane one.
Kismet: The quietly radical shift here is that wars used to send countries scrambling for more fossil fuels, but now they’re just as likely to send households shopping for solar panels, heat pumps and EVs instead. 👉 Links Inline
India’s Gas Scare Is Sending Induction Stoves Flying Off Shelves
In India, fears of LPG shortages linked to the Middle East conflict are triggering a rush on electric cooking, with induction stoves selling out online and in shops. It’s a sharp little preview of something bigger: when fossil fuel supply gets shaky, electrification stops looking theoretical very quickly.
Indian households are switching to induction stoves en masse as concerns grow over cooking gas shortages and refill delays.
Amazon India said induction stove sales jumped more than 30-fold, while rice cookers and electric pressure cookers rose fourfold.
Manufacturers are ramping up production fast, with TTK Prestige reporting a threefold surge in demand and moving to full capacity.
Why This Matters: This is what energy insecurity looks like in everyday life, and it’s also a reminder that electrification is not just cleaner, it’s often the fastest escape route from fossil fuel disruption.
Kismet: One of the more revealing details here is that restaurants as well as households are now looking at induction as a contingency plan, which is how transitions often begin, not with grand ideology, but with people trying to keep dinner happening. 👉 Full story here
Battery Energy Storage
China’s Storage Boom Is Getting Hard to Ignore
China isn’t just building more renewables, it’s building the batteries to make them far more useful. From January to February alone, the country’s lithium-ion battery production for energy storage jumped 84%, a staggering signal that storage is moving from nice-to-have to core infrastructure.
China’s energy storage lithium-ion battery output rose 84% year on year in the first two months of 2026.
Wind turbine output also rose 28.7%, showing storage and renewables are scaling together, not separately.
Chinese officials framed this as part of a broader industrial upgrade, with green industries becoming a major growth engine.
Why This Matters: Clean energy without storage is powerful but incomplete, so China’s surge in battery production matters because it strengthens the grid, cuts curtailment, and makes high-renewables systems much more practical.
Kismet: The striking part here is not just the 84% growth, but the fact that storage is now being talked about in the same breath as national economic resilience, which is usually when a technology stops being niche and starts becoming destiny. 👉 Full story here
Donut Lab’s Wild Battery Claims Just Got a Bit Less Wild
A few weeks ago, Donut Lab’s solid-state battery claims sounded almost offensively ambitious. This new update doesn’t prove the whole case, but it does move the story from “nice slide deck” to “interesting engineering result”: the company says its 18kWh pack sustained more than 100kW charging for five straight minutes inside a real Verge electric motorcycle. Extraordinary claims still require extraordinary evidence, obviously, but this is at least evidence.
Donut Lab says its solid-state pack charged from 10% to 50% in five minutes, reached 70% in just over nine, and hit 80% in 12 minutes.
The test was done in a real motorcycle pack, not just at cell level, and used air cooling rather than liquid cooling.
The bigger claims remain unproven, especially around 400Wh/kg energy density and 100,000-cycle life, so scepticism is still entirely warranted.
Why This Matters: If the charging performance holds up under independent testing, it could point to a genuinely meaningful step forward for lighter, faster-charging EV batteries.
Kismet: The most revealing part of the story may be what still hasn’t been shown, because in battery land the gap between a compelling demo and a commercial breakthrough is where a lot of hype goes to die. 👉 Full story here
Latest blog post
What 17 Days of War Could Have Bought Instead
In my latest blog post, I make a pretty blunt point: in just 17 days, this war burned through an estimated $88.7 billion, enough to buy system-shaping amounts of solar, wind and battery storage instead of more volatility, more inflation and more strategic stupidity. If your idea of energy security still depends on tankers squeezing through the Strait of Hormuz, you’re not defending prosperity, you’re gambling it.
I break down what $88.7 billion could buy at current clean energy costs: roughly 128GW of solar, 85GW of onshore wind, or 462GWh of battery storage.
The piece argues that renewables, storage, grids and electrification are now security assets, not just climate assets.
And I make the case that every new solar farm, battery project and grid upgrade is a small act of geopolitical defiance against fossil fuel chokepoints.
Why This Matters: The energy transition is no longer too expensive by any serious measure. The real extravagance is clinging to a fossil system that keeps sending society the bill.
Kismet: One of the more staggering implications is that the cost of just 17 days of war could have funded enough battery storage to rival the grid-scale build-out plans of entire countries, which says a lot about how distorted our definition of “security” has become. 👉 Full story here
Podcasts:
Big Change: The Podcast Archives Are Now Open to Everyone
I’ve made a significant change to both Climate Confident and Resilient Supply Chain. Until now, subscribers to the + editions got access to the full back catalogue of nearly 800 episodes, while everyone else could only hear the most recent 30 days. That’s gone. The full archive is now open to everyone, because good ideas shouldn’t expire on an arbitrary timer.
The complete back catalogue of both podcasts is now available to all listeners, free.
Climate Confident+ and Resilient Supply Chain+ now focus on something new: bonus episodes with extra analysis, insight, and commentary.
I’ll be dropping those bonus episodes roughly every two weeks, giving subscribers a deeper cut on the stories and themes shaping climate, energy, tech, and supply chains.
Why This Matters: Opening the archive widens access to years of conversations and insight, while the new bonus model gives subscribers something more valuable than simple paywalled access: sharper context.
Kismet: One of the stranger truths of podcasting is that some of the most relevant episodes are often the older ones, because once you strip out the headlines, the real bottlenecks, blind spots, and strategic lessons tend to age remarkably well.
Climate Confident:
The Dirty Secret of Heating, and Why Geothermal Could Change the Grid
This week on Climate Confident, I spoke with Dan Yates, CEO of Dandelion Energy, about one of the most overlooked parts of the energy transition: how we heat buildings. We talk about why conventional heating electrification can actually worsen winter peak demand, and why geothermal may be far more than a better HVAC system. It could be grid infrastructure in disguise.
Dan argues that heating and cooling account for around 80% of building emissions, yet still get far less attention than transport or power.
We unpack the “dirty secret” of air-source heat pumps in cold weather, when they can switch into highly inefficient resistance-heating mode and hammer both bills and the grid.
And we explore why geothermal, especially if costs keep falling, could cut peak demand, avoid grid build-out, and become a serious lever for building decarbonisation at scale.
Why This Matters: If we electrify heating badly, we create a new bottleneck. If we electrify it intelligently, we reduce emissions, cut bills, and make the grid easier to decarbonise.
Kismet: One of the sharpest lines in the episode is Dan’s point that most buildings are still “heated by a fire in the basement”, which is such a primitive description of modern heating that it makes the status quo suddenly sound as absurd as it really is. 🎧 Listen to the full episode
Resilient Supply Chain:
Why Last-Mile Logistics Is Becoming a Revenue Engine, Not Just a Cost Centre
This week on Resilient Supply Chain, I spoke with Nishith Rastogi, founder and CEO of Locus, about how AI is changing last-mile logistics from a messy, intuition-led grind into a real-time decision system. The big shift is this: smarter dispatch, routing and allocation don’t just cut costs and emissions, they can also improve customer experience, boost retention, and turn delivery from an operational headache into a competitive advantage.
Nishith explains how AI-driven logistics platforms are moving beyond static rules to make real-time decisions on dispatch, routing, carrier selection, vehicle type, failed deliveries and network design.
We talk about why better load planning and smarter allocation can raise fill rates from 50 to 60% up to 80% or more, cutting miles per package and lowering emissions at the same time.
And we dig into a more surprising point: last-mile delivery is increasingly becoming a customer interaction layer, and in some cases even a revenue generator through premium delivery options, retention plays, and better post-purchase experience.
Why This Matters: In a more volatile world, the companies that win won’t just move goods faster, they’ll make better decisions faster, with lower cost, lower emissions, and less dependence on tribal knowledge.
Kismet: One of the most interesting ideas in the episode is that delivery teams are starting to evolve into customer insight teams, with some retailers training drivers not just to drop off products, but to gather feedback that feeds directly back into product design. 🎧 Listen to the full episode
Coming Soon to the podcasts
In the coming episodes I will be talking to 1Logtech’s CEO JP Wiggins, and Arbor Energy’s CEO Brad Hartwig.
Don’t forget to follow the podcasts in your podcast app of choice to ensure you don’t miss any episodes.
Featured Chart(s)
Can concur. Owning an EV saves a fortune, and is better for the planet. Win-win.
Lots of countries are realising this, and so EV sales are booming. Especially now that oil prices are going through the roof thanks to the ill-advised US-Israeli war on Iran.
We’re doing well here in Spain, it has to be said when it comes to our energy infrastructure. Not perfect. Still lots to be improved, but better than most.
Brexit was fought on stopping immigrants from coming to the UK. Like so many other aspects of Brexit, that didn’t quite go as planned.
Misc stuff
Two more suggestions on how to overcome the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran.
I LoL’d!
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
Another point of view on St. Patrick’s greatest achievement!
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