🌱 The Grumpy Optimists #171

London Climate Action Recap

Happy Monday. 👋

The last week was London Climate Action Week and it was a very busy one. The irony that it was also set in the midst of a raging heatwave. So hot that a Reform council couldn’t hold a meeting about scrapping net zero, and an event about extreme heat was also cancelled, because of…extreme heat. What I am taking from this week is that people are starting to realise how bad our summers will be over the coming years. It’s not quite optimistic but it is something.

As part of LCAW I also hosted a great event with Zevero. You can read more about that here. Anyway, let’s bring some positivity into your week folks!

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👀 News to make you feel good this week

🏔️ First major hydropower projects in Great Britain in 40 years given go-ahead. Ofgem has provisionally greenlit 16 long-duration storage projects, including three pumped-hydro schemes in the Scottish Highlands that will use lochs as giant natural batteries. The last one of these was Dinorwig in Wales back in 1984, so this has been a long time coming. Pumped hydro is unglamorous and brilliant, you pump water uphill when power is cheap, let it fall through turbines when demand peaks.

💭 My thoughts? The bottleneck for renewables was never really generation, it was storage and the willingness to build. Forty years of nothing, then 16 projects at once. These things feel impossible right up until the politics shifts and suddenly everyone’s “getting Britain building again.”

🔌 Renewables just hit 30% of US electricity generation. New data shows renewables supplied a full 30% of US power in the first four months of 2026, up from 27.8% a year earlier, with coal output falling nearly 12%. In April, utility-scale solar capacity overtook wind for the first time, and battery storage capacity jumped 58%. All of this during an administration actively trying to prop up coal.

🛢️ ‘It’s now a no-brainer’: Fortescue says Trump has done more for renewables than anyone in 100 years. The mining giant’s CEO reckons the oil-price chaos triggered by Trump’s war on Iran has made the economics of ditching diesel unanswerable. When filling a pick-up truck goes between $200 to $400 and back in a fortnight, planning around fossil fuels becomes impossible. Fortescue is targeting “real zero” within four years and has 1.1GW of solar under construction in the Pilbara.

💭 My thoughts? I love that the strongest case for renewables now isn’t morality, it’s that fossil fuels are a geopolitical liability you can’t forecast around. When the iron-ore guys are this evangelical about solar, the argument is over.

🏭 US court rejects EPA bid to ease regulations for coal-fired power plants. A federal appeals court knocked back the Trump EPA’s attempt to scrap Biden-era soot pollution limits. The standard the agency wanted to kill was projected to prevent roughly 4,500 premature deaths and 800,000 asthma cases a year. The court left it standing.

🚗 UK sales of electric vehicles just overtook petrol cars for the first time. Over the past 12 months, more new EVs were sold in the UK than petrol cars.

🌡️ Reform UK climate debate delayed over extreme heat. A Reform councillor in West Norfolk wanted to scrap the council’s 2021 climate emergency declaration. The debate was postponed because the chamber, which has no air conditioning, was too hot to sit in under an amber heat warning. As one independent councillor put it, the weather had “submitted its own amendment to the motion.”

🐟 Mombasa: key outcomes from the Our Ocean Conference in Kenya. The first Our Ocean Conference held on African soil produced 320 voluntary commitments and a reported $6.4bn in mobilised finance, plus the Mombasa Declaration on fisheries transparency signed by 16 governments, half of them African. More than a third of the world’s marine protected areas trace back to announcements made at this conference over the years.

🐋 Billionaire to invest in ocean protection as UK and US scale back funding. In similar news, Michael Bloomberg has pledged $260m to ocean conservation, much of it aimed at enforcing the High Seas Treaty. We’ve pledged to protect 30% of the oceans by 2030 and we’re currently at 10%, so the gap is enormous.

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This week’s episode was written after a very sweaty bike ride and a good few days of exercise. On that note, there will be no The Grumpy Optimists next week as I will be cycling around the hills Girona and plan on switching off for the entire week. A much much needed break.

My music recommendation for the week is Khal!l MY FEET. I think this guy could be a big thing.

George, the Grumpy Optimist 💚