Dan Grey

Even worse, plug-in hybrid sales increased 47% year on year in January, while electric vehicle sales did not increase at all.

This really, really sucks

Yesterday NASA conducted a fully successful wet dress rehearsal – loading all of the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants and counting down to T-33 seconds.

This is actually the first successful WDR NASA has achieved with the Space Launch System rocket; the sixth time's the charm!

NESO informed us this week that we should finally see batteries as a "fuel type" in live grid data soon, perhaps as early as April.

Will be great to see what the ~6 GW of battery energy storage systems in GB are up to in real time

New generation record in 2026: As of January, wind and solar have now consistently out-generated fossil gas power for 12-months in a row, for the first time. A threshold has now been crossed where wind and solar have generated more than gas through winter, spring, summer and autumn.

Why Cornwall's biggest reservoir is not full after SO much rain After up to 40 straight days of rain in parts of Cornwall, this explanation of why our largest lake is at slightly over 80 per cent is quite something

They'll likely begin pumping in a month or two. SWW's strategic reservoirs all have small catchments and depend on pumping to a greater or lesser extent. SWW leave it as late as possible because it's very expensive to do
uk.news.yahoo.com/why-cornwall...

Water bills are rising as Johnson wanted level four to be a 1 in 500 year occurrence in a warmed climate – a tough and inevitably expensive ask

I think we're ok on that front 😄

A true drought (where, in water industry lingo, we get to "level 4" – standpipes and water supply rotation) needs a dry summer followed by a dry winter followed by a dry summer; fortunately very rare but increasingly likely.

China is becoming a green superpower as Trump retreats from climate goals - BBC News How the world's biggest carbon emitter is now at the helm of a renewables revolution.

I've been looking out for an article like this; inside China's extraordinary build out of solar power.

Dry numbers like "China added 300 GW of solar in 2025" don't do justice to the scale and engineering of these projects

Definitely, but even with the valuations of those homes it would be very expensive when there's no prospect of selling on. Central government needs to get its cheque book out.

But the last time we did it, under New Labour, it was none too popular 🤔
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing...

Rents must be very low when few people with private means wants to live there.

Easington has new-build estates – it's not the place, it's the housing. Those buildings are too far gone.

I think Chris is probably saying that Adam was saying let's not spend HB/UC housing element on housing people in those terraces. House them elsewhere. I would agree with that, although with a mood of "cutting the welfare bill", it's a very cheap way of housing people.

It has raised every day of the year in Exeter – 50 days straight

My gauge has recorded 351 mm, over a third of the annual average, in just 1/8th of the year

Durham’s ‘Category D’ villages - Bennett School of Public Policy As government decides where to distribute the Shared Prosperity and Levelling Up funds, Owen Garling recommends places should be considered as more than just units of economic production.

I was not aware of the County Plan and it is fascinating (and imho, was very sensible)
www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/blog/categor...

The thing is that in Stoke and Liverpool the local authority owned the homes. The one in the BBC article are owned by "absentee landlords"

This made me smile 🙂

Looking at Google Maps it looks like much of the problems described in that article are limited to the high-density terraced housing built for mine workers before WWI. The solution is the same as anywhere; build better housing elsewhere and demolish them

What do you mean by "paying people to live in them"?

🇷🇺 NEW | Monthly analysis of Russian fossil fuel exports & sanctions

📉 In January 2026, Russia’s monthly fossil fuel export revenues saw a marginal 3% month-on-month decline to EUR 464 mn per day — the lowest figures since full-scale invasion of Ukraine

Ethiopia has the insight that seems to be eluding EU leaders.

An extraordinary new column in the Daily Telegraph (no, that's not a typo!) by Ambrose Evans Pritchard.

Yes, it includes two charts by Carbon Brief, sure.

But stay for the concluding few paragraphs about the electoral suicide of climate denial...

www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...

Judges are extremely conservative 🙄

We all knew this was coming, and 12p/kWh for export from Octopus is still pretty good.

EDF, British Gas, and Good Energy offer 15p/kWh (16p with Ecotricity) if you have your import tariff with them too, but I wouldn't be surprised if they move to cut their export rate now Octopus has.

Back on twitter I used the hashtag #WhyCantExeterHaveNiceThings, think I might have to start doing so here

Dean of Exeter against rejected one-way system in city centre Plans for a one-way system on the Barnfield Road route into the city centre are rejected.

I forgot Exeter Labour's latest triumph: throwing away £380,000 of active travel funding to close a rat run through the city centre and instead provide people walking and cycling with safe facilities (avoiding the inner bypass), supposedly because the cathedral Dean didn't want to be inconvenienced

I really don't understand the strategy of prompting politicians who are proven very very unpopular. But hey, if it helps reduce support for reform, I'm all for it

It's 14 years since we last had a local plan. Fourteen! Exeter council has lost several expensive planning appeals, even a High Court case, because it can't manage the basics.

It will be a blessed relief to see the back of Labour.

They insist on building a handful of Passivhaus social houses fitted with gas boilers for hot water each year, instead of building larger numbers of houses with heat pumps.

Even our new swimming pool is "Passivhaus", and heated entirely with gas. Cost twice as much as it should have

The news that our local elections will go ahead brought me so much joy.

Labour councillors scrapped our low traffic neighbourhood halfway through a trial which was showing it was working (walking and cycling up dramatically, driving down)

They denied us a new bus lane, over-riding council officers

For sure!

Go big or go home!