🌱 The Grumpy Optimists #174
Three terawatts of solar, tigers on the up, and rope bridges for monkey
Hello, welcome back to your weekly round-up of positive climate news.
A slight hiccup in getting this post out yesterday, mainly because I had my laptop stolen from my flat whilst I took a Sunday afternoon nap. Serves me right for being lazy! I also took last week off after some wonderful time back at my parents house in Wales, running along the coast, swimming in beautiful lakes and being Uncle George to my nephew.
👀 News to make you feel good this week
Before I kick off, there’s a lot of great energy data from the past two weeks, so here are a few good stories to show you the rate of change happening.
🌞 The world crossed a major solar milestone. The world has now installed 3 terawatts of solar. The first terawatt took an entire decade to build. The second was under three years and the most recent one less than two. This shows the crazy rate of acceleration of solar and how much China is responsible for growth.
🇩🇪 Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time ever. Carbon Brief analysis shows wind and solar generated 44% of Germany’s electricity in 2025, edging past fossil fuels on 43%. Two decades of Energiewende, delivered while phasing out nuclear at the same time and with the Alternative für Deutschland actively campaigning against renewables.
☀️ Solar powers record share of Britain’s electricity mix in July. 14.4% of Britain’s electricity came from solar last month, smashing the previous record of 12.4% set in May and up 50% on last July. Yes, it was the sunniest July on record. But it’s also the result of the busiest six months for solar installations since 2011, most of them on household rooftops.
🇺🇸 Trump is aiding a golden age for renewable energy. The US is on track to install nearly 85GW of new generating capacity in the next 12 months, and about 90% of it is solar, wind and batteries. Gas gets 9%. Coal, despite everything, including a self-declared coal president in Donald Trump, barely registers. Cleantech companies also pulled in $60 billion of equity funding in the first half of 2026, the best six months since the Inflation Reduction Act era. It turns out economics is a stubborn opponent to fascism.
🚗 In Denmark, EVs accounted for almost all new car registrations in July. 80% of all new cars registered in Denmark last month were fully electric. Among private buyers, it was 97%.
🚄 Austria and France banned short-haul flights to boost train travel. Did it work? Yes. Climate TRACE ran the numbers on Europe’s flight bans, and the answer is yes. Austria’s domestic aviation emissions have fallen 22% since 2023 and are now the smallest-emitting subsector in its entire transport system. France’s Orly routes show the same steady decline. Their modelling suggests that if rail replaced all domestic flights under 800km globally, it would cut over 72 million tonnes of CO₂e a year.
💭 My thoughts? Regular readers will know I’d take a train over a plane any day, not just for climate reasons but because I hate flying. Policies like these rely on good-value, high-speed and on-time trains, something the French (surprisingly) can do fairly well. As somebody who’s gone to the south of France, the Alps and Paris in the last 12 months, I can see why these short-haul flight bans can work.
⚖️ As climate lawsuits advance, the oil industry enters ‘panic mode’. A judge in Washington state has allowed the first wrongful death lawsuit against big oil to proceed, brought by a woman whose mother died in the 2021 heat dome. Meanwhile the industry is lobbying Congress for blanket immunity from climate litigation. As one advocate in the piece asks: if these companies have done nothing wrong and the law is on their side, why are they asking for immunity? Politely, f*ck big oil.
🇸🇬 Singapore releases proposed ISSB-aligned sustainability reporting standards. Singapore’s regulator has published draft disclosure standards aligned with the ISSB, forming the basis of mandatory climate reporting that starts with large listed companies this year. It comes with grants to cover first-report costs and training to build assurance capability. While other jurisdictions water down their rules, Singapore is quietly building the infrastructure to make climate reporting stick.
🐯 Nepal’s tiger numbers rise 20% to an estimated 429. Nepal’s wild tiger population is up from 355 in 2022 to 429 today, and from just 121 in 2009. It was the first country to meet the global pledge to double tiger numbers, and the count keeps climbing at roughly 5% a year.
🐒 Amazon canopy bridges enable 15,000 wildlife crossings without a single roadkill. Eight rope bridges strung over a highway in Mato Grosso recorded 15,000 crossings by monkeys and other canopy dwellers in 15 months, with zero deaths. Six primate species use them, including the critically endangered Alta Floresta titi monkey. Brazil’s transport department has now adopted the design as the national standard for highways.
💭 My thoughts? This isn’t a story that will change the world, but with roughly 9 million mammals dying on Brazilian roads every year, small things like this are pretty meaningful. Not every climate solution needs a gigafactory.
That’s all for this week folks. I promise to get back to slightly more regular scheduling. My music recommendation for the week is Palace’s Dream On.
George, the Grumpy Optimist 💚