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One of the things that has fascinated me over the last few years is that while the world has become obsessed with batteries, AI and data centres, very few people have noticed that another technological revolution is quietly taking place underneath them all.
By Gerard Reid and Carsten Pfeiffer
The European Commission’s new draft Electrification Action Plan is an important and welcome step forward and, as Jan Rosenow points out in his excellent analysis, it contains many of the right ideas around accelerating electrification, reducing energy costs, improving competitiveness and strengthening Europe’s energy system.
Despite all the conferences, strategy papers, funding announcements and speeches about AI sovereignty, Europe is very poorly positioned in the global world of artificial intelligence.
For most of modern history electricity has been treated as a background service, vital but invisible, and noticed only when the lights went out or when the bill arrived.
I recently visited Rheinsberg, a small town north of Berlin that is home to a 70 MW nuclear power plant which first came online in 1966.
Germany’s Energy Choice: Petrostate or Electrostate
The most important consequence of the ongoing crisis in the Gulf will most likely not be the military headlines but the economic shock that follows as rising energy prices spread across the global economy.
I was recently looking at a presentation showing average electricity prices for industrial and commercial customers across Europe.
What we are watching unfold in the Gulf right now is not just another regional flare up but a reminder that the global energy system still rests on a handful of physical chokepoints and that geopolitics can still move markets faster than anything else.
