David Fickling
@davidfickling
Climate columnist at @opinion.bloomberg.com. Migrant from London to Warrane/Sydney. These are my views. If you don't like them, well, I have others.
The mine I visited was first opened in 1917; closed in 1920 after the end of World War I; opened on the eve of WWII in 1938, and closed when the Cold War ended in 1990. They are hoping to start extracting ore from the flooded underground mine in the coming months:
You might think that this would make tungsten mines outside of China into hives of activity and speculative investment dollars. In fact, it’s just the opposite: Because cheap Chinese tungsten is so dominant, it’s been a constant struggle to raise capital and make sustainable profits.
Chinese export controls and fears of war since the start of the Trump administration have sent its price soaring almost ninefold since the start of 2025:
China has the best geological resources, by far. In some critical minerals such as gallium and lithium, China has acquired a crucial market share by dominating processing. The list of minerals where its dominance is innate and geological is pretty short: rare earths, tungsten, maybe antimony.
There’s a forgotten history of the 20th century where tungsten is one of the very most important materials for a country in wartime, alongside steel and oil. Nowadays, 80% of it comes from China. That’s an obvious vulnerability.
Europe has an oceanic climate which means you normally get cool nights in summer, so until recently existing buildings did a good job of keeping residents cool. People seem to have this idea that Europeans have been sweating through hot nights for decades and just putting up with it. It’s weird.
The French-Swiss mind cannot conceive of modern buildings like this
This is what the average housing unit in (left) Italy and (right) France looks like. Tha challenges of doing AC in Europe are absolutely not “everyone lives in heritage buildings”
Imagine if you managed to avert World War I, but then enduring peace depended on nothing kicking off while a bunch of Franz Ferdinands and Gavrilo Princips chased each other round some globally live-streamed Squid Game.
Renewables-plus-storage is so cheap that in large parts of the world it is cheaper to build a whole new clean power plant than just pay for the fuel and maintenance for a fully-depreciated gas generator. Renewables aren’t just threatening new-build gas — they are undermining existing plants.
In 2018, the IEA’s main scenario reckoned gas generation in Asia would grow by a third by 2025, and still be almost twice as big as solar in 2040. In fact, it has barely grown at all since 2018, and solar overtook last year.
As @ember-energy.org and @carbonbrief.org have pointed out, solar has already overtaken gas in Asia. But the most striking thing for me in this chart isn’t the rising solar line, it’s the almost-flat gas one. There is no growth there!
Still think that there’s a booming future market for LNG? Look at how solar has crushed gas in California over the last few years. Now consider that LNG markets pay 2x-3x as much for their gas as California. www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...
<you-are-not-serious-people-succession.gif> politicalwire.com/2026/05/12/p...
3. Look at that list of countries where they are already competitive on price. These are some of the biggest diesel markets: China, India, the US, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, France, Turkey, Brazil etc etc As with EVs, we may be seeing emerging markets leapfrogging richer countries.
Why do I say this could be a bigger deal than EV cars? 1. Trucks consume more fuel! Their numbers are far fewer, but trucks and buses consume as much petroleum as all the cars and motorbikes in the road. Add in off-road mining and port trucks and construction equipment, and it’s a lot more.
Take scooters. EVs are within spitting distance of the cheapest big-selling petrol scooters in India *right now*, running costs are already far lower, and Delhi is banning new registrations for petrol scooters from 2028. Biggest two-wheeler market by far. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
But China spent last year sticking roughly 1 million barrels a day into reserves, to protect itself against a crisis like the one now unfolding. www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...
This is a commodity cost curve. The vertical axis is price, the horizontal axis is demand. When demand goes up, it unlocks higher-cost production, and vice versa.
She was absolutely taking no shit from notorious sleazeball modeling agent and Trump/Epstein crony Johnny Casablancas:
Curious whether in a Hungarian context, having a candidate called Peter Magyar is like having a US Presidential candidate called Captain America
Meanwhile over in the Bad Place, we’re still waiting for signs that an election has even been held
I remember writing about this at the time, reading the dismissal of wind and solar in Pakistan’s latest grid plan, and talking to people who saw no prospect of this changing: www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...