Iain Soutar

As we breach 1.5 °C, we must replace temperature limits with clean-energy targets Nature - Actionable goals are needed to guide the world towards what needs to happen most quickly: shifting economies to clean energy sources.

As the world quickly approaches 1.5C, researchers have a call in Nature to rethink the utility of temperature targets – and to potentially replace them with more actionable and precise targets around clean energy:

Early opportunity signals of a tipping point in the UK's second-hand electric vehicle market Abstract. The use of early warning signals to detect the movement of natural systems towards tipping points is well established. Here, we explore whether the same indicators can provide early opportunity signals (EOSs) of a tipping point in a social dataset: views of online electric vehicle (EV) adverts from a UK car-selling website (2018–2023). The daily share of EV advert views (versus non-EV adverts) is small but increasing overall and responds to specific external events, including abrupt petrol/diesel price increases, by spiking upwards before returning to a quasi-equilibrium state. An increasing return time observed over time indicates a loss of resilience of the incumbent state dominated by internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) advert views. View share also exhibits increases in lag-1 autocorrelation and variance consistent with hypothesized movement towards a tipping point to an EV-dominated market. Segregating the viewing data by price range and year, we find a change in viewing habits from 2023. Trends in EOSs from EV advert views in low to mid-price ranges provide evidence that these sectors of the market may have passed a tipping point, consistent with other evidence that second-hand EVs recently reached price parity with equivalent second-hand ICEV models of the same age. This pioneering analysis of how EOSs applied to novel data can be used to predict the approach to a tipping point in a social system warrants further research to test the robustness and wider applicability of the method.

The final version of our EV paper is out! 🚙

We analysed a novel data set of EV advert views, discovering that after certain events there are spikes in attention of EVs which take longer to dissipate over time.

esd.copernicus.org/articles/16/...

#TippingPoints #ElectricVehicles

National park signs related to Native Americans, climate change to be removed Among the national parks targeted in the new removal orders are some of the country’s most iconic: Grand Canyon, Glacier, Big Bend and Zion.

They're also removing the remaining glaciers from Glacier National Park.

House burping: should we all adopt this German habit? It’s a simple way to keep homes fresh and mould-free, and has caught on in the US. But there are a few potential downsides ...

House burping: should we all adopt this German habit?

I say yes

www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ja...

The best-laid plans: Tracing public engagement change in emergent Smart Local Energy Systems To be fair, acceptable and ultimately successful, decentralised energy projects involving technological innovations require engagement with users, loc…

A few hours late, but it'd be remiss of me to fail to mention the time I successfully lobbied to insert a Robert Burns line into the title of a journal article.

Very cool indeed.

Congrats!

This is now a no-brainer.

You know who”stayed a little back” in VIetnam? DJT.

Why 60 new homes in village will not have solar panels A house builder will not have to install solar panels on 60 new homes being built in Upton.

Why PV mandate can't come soon enough. Sure you can tick your Part L w/ a HP but you're making it more 💶 to run

As for 'visual benefits' what will actually happen is individual homes (for 🍃 or to cut bills) will add (at greater installation 💷) 60 versions of PV which will be far more discordant 😫

This week, we had the launch of the UK Public Attitudes to Science, a gold standard survey. One of the most interesting findings: people say they know more about AI than other technologies but like it less. pas.ipsos.com/wp-content/u...

🥁 India Is Electrifying Faster Than China 🥁

Read our story on @ember-energy.org's analysis. Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

‘My heat pump triumphed during Alaska’s snowpocalypse’ Juneau's severest winter storm in decades was no match for some air-to-air heat pumps

NEW: A mega snow storm - SNOWPOCALYPSE - recently hit residents of Juneau, Alaska.

I spoke to heat pump owners there to find out how they coped. Their heat pumps did great, apparently!

www.thereengineer.pro/p/my-heat-pu...

Wind farm turbines, inter-array cables and export cables are on the renewables map! 🙌

Massive thanks to @russ.garrett.co.uk for allowing me to use the amazing @openinframap.org data for this (which uses OpenStreetMap at its core), this saved me an immense amount of time and energy.

There should be a special place in bibliographic hell for people who don't put dates on their PDFs.

To what extent is the Board of Peace going to be a fossil fuel-based alliance?

Is this going to divide the world into petro-state and electro-state spheres?

Excellent article here by @jamesriding.bsky.social summarising the main things to know from the new Warm Homes Plan

Our smart heating costs too much to run, say Hull tenants - BBC News The makers of the system claim its "operating recommendations" were not followed.

Infrared heating system issues - I've not heard of such a troublesome case with this tech before. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Low-carbon technologies like solar and batteries save people money. Solar panels with an export guarantee can save households nearly £600. 🧵

@merrynthomas.bsky.social

Preferably safe and small: Findings from a risk-cost-benefit analysis on #enhanced #geothermal systems (EGS) in #Switzerland 🇨🇭 and #Utah 🇺🇸. Read the findings in the recently published paper in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Transition (Elsevier): ⬇️ doi.org/10.1016/j.rs... @trutnevyte.bsky.social

Lenny from the Simpsons after being insulted by Ned Flanders saying “hey, I’ve only been here a few minutes. What’s going on?”

Iceland at Davos

How will the Warm Homes Plan change home heating? Prioritising electric technologies like heat pumps and solar, and backed by £15 billion investment, the plan will mandate minimum energy efficiency standards for rented homes and create the new Warm H...

We have our Nesta reaction to today's Warm Homes Plan up!

What does it mean for heating, fabric and electrification? What funding is available? What gaps are there in the plan?
Read all about it here:

www.nesta.org.uk/blog/how-wil...

No ban on gas boilers in UK warm homes plan but heat pumps get £2.7bn push Government opts against phasing out new boilers by 2035 in effort to cut energy bills by as much as £1,000 a year

The press release for the Warm Homes Plan - the long-awaited Warm Homes Plan! - is out

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Totally missed the aurora last night. I do hope someone took a photo.

🚨The Petition calling for by-elections to be called automatically when MPs defect to another party now has 43,000 signatures! Let’s get the 100,000 needed!
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...

Get that electric feeling: new campaign launched to show savings and benefits of going electric Over 50,000 UK drivers have made savings of up to £3,750 on a new electric vehicle and £1,400 a year on running costs.

A Government-led public information campaign on EVs has been long overdue to help rebut the tidal wave of misinformation we see across the media. It's great to see the Government launch its new campaign today to highlight the cost of living benefits of switching to an EV.

www.gov.uk/government/n...

Six things to look out for in the UK government's upcoming Warm Homes Plan The Warm Homes Plan will be the UK government’s major new strategy to upgrade Britain’s homes. Here are six critical areas to watch.

The UK govt's Warm Homes Plan is finally due to come out this week (global events notwithstanding). What should we expect in the plan?

My colleagues @tomleach.bsky.social and @lilydownes.bsky.social have written a nice preview here: six things to look out for in the Warm Homes Plan

I've also heard rumours of this but for the love of god, how is a *government* going to stop kids from *using phones at night*? Something a government would be very well placed to do, however, would be to geoblock access to Grok, and yet ... not hearing any indicators that is coming down the line

"I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace.”