Ben James

I recently built a website that breaks down the cost of a UK electricity bill. It's interactive, and I'd recommend visiting it before reading this post. Check it out here: electricitybills.uk Here are three interesting things about the data. #1: The wholesale power cost is only one third of

What will affect the earth’s temperature the most in the next 10 years? Aerosols “Aerosols” is a fancy name for “tiny particles in the air”. Aerosols are the most potent climate lever in the world, because they act near instantly. Some aerosols warm the planet, for example, soot (‘black

If you asked me how to scale clean energy, I would prescribe a magical source of urgent energy demand. Someone willing to pay a premium to build solar+batteries, geothermal, and nuclear, in order to bring them down the cost curve and make them cheaper for everyone. That is exactly

A break from climate-posting to share eight quick things about my autumn. 1. I will be in San Francisco in mid October. Let me know who I should meet! 2. Over one hundred thousand people visited my blog during September, which feels very bonkers. People seemed to enjoy that solar

We are told that energy transitions are always slow. But this is not supported by history. When a nation decisively commits to building energy infrastructure, it can build fast. We perceive that “energy can’t change quickly” because of recency bias. Most people in The West today have not experienced

The cost of solar panels is plummeting, and this will flood the power grid with cheap electricity. But that’s just Act 1. We won’t stop building solar at the limits of the grid - we’ll build a lot more. This post explains why we'll keep building more,

There are three ways to decarbonise flying. The world's existing fleet of planes is huge, and can only run on jet fuel. Therefore, we need a drop-in fuel replacement that doesn’t cause warming. This is called Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). This piece is a concentrated onboarding guide to SAF.

Corn makes car go broom broom?

The basics.

Ammonia is a more expensive form of hydrogen, that happens to be better suited for transport over long distances. It’s also the only reason that 8 billion people can be alive at once (it makes fertiliser).