It's not the best option in the world, but in the event of train failure I have caught taxis Mulhouse- Basel. (And hotels in Mulhouse were not expensive either, I just wanted to get home.)
NEW ANALYSIS: UK emissions fell 2.4% in 2025 as coal fell to a 400-year low. Incredibly, we used less coal last year than than in 1600, when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne and Shakespeare was writing Hamlet.
All the details in our article: www.carbonbrief.org/...
Gas demand overall was at its lowest since 1992.
I would say that regularly publishing the chart is making uncertainty / ignorance pretty explicit. The trouble is that we are really guessing in the dark, and adding probabilities to those guesses would just create another thing to guess (for 148 markets + buffer).
Eh, it's not really the first time, often we have a little wobble around 2Q for the current year (enough that we try to resist the 2Q Wobble Effect). Is it right? Who knows.
Yeah, in 2018 we also overforecasted.
What would be the point? They'd still be wrong. (This is mid scenario, you can use high instead to slightly reduce the "local analysts are cowards" factor in some business scenarios).
A BloombergNEF chart by Jenny Chase's team, showing solar build forecasts over time for selected quarters since 2011. In 2011, we only had two-year forecasts and they were flattish at 30-40GW/year; over the years, these forecasts drift upwards and generally are lower than what actually happened. In 2021 we started doing forecasts to 2030, and they were also flattish, though also hilariously drift upwards. In 2024 we expected solar build to rise from just under 600GW, to about 850GW in 2030; as of 1Q 2026, we cut this slightly in the long run.
BNEF's forecasts for solar build over time. We drastically* underpredicted what China would deploy in 2023 and 2024, and the effect of Russia invading Ukraine in 2022.
We cut forecasts in late 2025 because the long-expected cannibalization is biting hard. But now there is a new fossil fuel squeeze.
This only works if the job you commute to is the night shift.
All my neighbours also have solar!
The cells for Li batteries are a big part of the overall cost, so it's not that cheap to just add more energy capacity. Whereas tanks / lakes of water are relatively cheap.
That is really an incredibly pretty rock.
I agree, which is why we went for "largely decoupled".
I have been annoying enough to see a change I wanted in the world.
Victory! This is BNEF's new definition of long-duration storage, from Yiyi Zhou's 2026 Long Duration Storage report (paywall: www.bnef.com/insights/38819 )
A dashboard showing the current status of the author's solar and storage system (a new 22kWh battery with an old 13.2kW solar system). The battery is at 97%, and still charging from the sun.
Oh, when will my husband come home from work (battery is at 97% charge and if he doesn't plug the car in soon we'll be throwing away electricity. I already baked a three-goose-egg quiche).
...dunno, sorry.
I think that's true, but many European renewables investors owning merchant power plants did very well out of Russia invading Ukraine (because they provided a partial solution to the energy problem) so uncertainty is pretty much positive for them.
Generally Europe's been lagging on BESS deployment, partly because our grids are pretty good and so high RE hasn't been causing big technical problems. But yeah, France, like everywhere else, plans to build batteries for all purposes.
www.businessfrance.fr/en/invest-in...
Especially batteries, here in Europe we're starting to get zero/ negative power prices whenever the sun comes out! Increasing the gas prices increases the spread that batteries can arbitrage from daytime to evening.
This seems unnecessarily contrarian. Sure the cost of capital for renewables rises a bit, but the cost of 1-month gas futures just rose *50%*. Of course people will build more renewables, and more batteries.
Thank you. I do notice it seems to be not happening and it's good to know why.
Thoughts on closed loop geothermal from someone who has clearly studied this (and wants it to work).
What's your take?
Day-ahead energy prices for 28/2/2026, showing 0 EUR for Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland between approx. 10:00 - 16:00
Spring has arrived in central and western Europe, as shown by the sun-shaped hole in the electricity prices for the day.
data.nordpoolgroup.com/auction/day-...
Enjoy your new system!
Opted for this quote yesterday. Price is in line with others and his kids go to the same school as mine.
He was going to install the panels with a ladder but when he heard I have scaffolding up already he rejuggled his jobs to install my panels on Monday.
@solarchase.bsky.social was right.
They're never going to get that "National Laboratory of the Rockies" name to stick though, even if they actually want to.
It's been eight years and people still won't call us BloombergNEF.
Eg, the US got 8.2% of its electricity from solar in the 12 months ending August 2025.
Page 7 is a good summary about what's going on with integrating renewables in high-penetration markets.
NREL, sorry, National Laboratory of the Rockies' 3Q 2025 global outlook on the solar industry contains some nice data points with good sourcing (and no paywall, unlike most of my work).
docs.nlr.gov/docs/fy26ost...
