By Adam Zyglis
(From The Matrix)
Friday, October 9, 2026
Thursday, October 8, 2026
Batteries replacing gas peaker plants
By Gavin Mooney
Gas peaker plants have traditionally been one of the workhorses supplying the evening peak in Texas, but batteries are now increasingly taking over that role.
The chart below shows average generation by hour of day in ERCOT, Texas' main grid. It compares the contribution of batteries and gas peaker plants between 2022 and 2025.
The shift has been rapid.
In 2022, batteries supplied just 7% of the combined battery and peaker generation.
In 2025, that figure had risen to 34%.
A few things stand out:
✅ Battery output is increasingly concentrated during the morning and evening peaks when there is no solar generation.
✅ Peaking gas generation remains important, but its share is steadily declining.
✅ Batteries are taking an increasingly large share of the generation traditionally supplied by gas peakers.
The change has accelerated as Texas has added more solar capacity, creating one of the more interesting second-order effects of the solar boom.
As solar floods the grid during the middle of the day, electricity prices often fall sharply. Batteries can charge during these low-price periods and discharge a few hours later when demand remains high but solar output is fading.
Texas has become one of the world's most attractive battery markets. Massive solar buildout, strong evening demand peaks and a market that rewards scarcity have created ideal conditions for battery storage.
Gas peakers are unlikely to disappear entirely. Batteries excel at covering short-duration peaks, but longer periods of high demand still favour dispatchable generation.
But batteries are increasingly performing the same role, and their share of that market continues to grow.
Deforestation in the 21st century
From Our World in Data
By Hannah Ritchie
[The article continues here]
Also, all that soy isn't for tofu. Most soy grown is used to feed animals. Soy grown for human food is just 3.7% of all soy grown.
Over the last two decades, the world has cut down forests at a rate of roughly one Costa Rica per year.1
The largest driver of deforestation has been the expansion of agriculture. This has been true for millennia, and it remains the case today.
But which products, in particular, have been responsible?
A recent study, published in Nature Food by Chandrakant Singh and Martin Persson, answered this question.2
In the chart below, you can see how much deforestation has been caused by different agricultural commodities. This is shown as the annual average between 2001 and 2023.
Beef was, by far, the largest driver, accounting for 41% of the total. Cattle need a lot of land for grazing, which means that the growing global demand for beef has led to the expansion of pasture. Beef alone has led to the destruction of more than two UK-sized areas of forest this century.
The second-largest driver was oilseeds. This category is dominated by deforestation for soy and palm oil; a lot of forest was lost to these plantations, especially in the first decade (as we’ll see later, these rates have fallen over the past ten years).
The other large drivers — accounting for 12% each — were forest plantations and cereal production.
Understanding what has driven deforestation is important, but so is understanding where the forests were lost.
Let’s then take the chart above, but break each bar into the respective regions where it happened. Looking at the chart below, we see that these losses are extremely geographically concentrated for many products.
More than half of deforestation for beef production occurred in Brazil. In fact, one-quarter of all deforestation this century was driven by Brazilian beef production alone. Most other cattle pasture expansion happened in Brazil’s neighbors in Latin America. So, clearance for beef is not only the world’s largest driver of deforestation; it has also been centered on some of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet: the Amazon rainforest and the Cerrado savanna.
Most deforestation for oilseeds — the second-largest driver — has been for palm oil and soy. Almost all of the world’s demand for palm oil has been met by just two countries — Indonesia and Malaysia — and this shows in the deforestation data. 6% of global deforestation has been caused by Indonesian palm oil production.
Forest plantations have been a large driver in parts of Asia and North America, particularly in the United States and China.
Finally, you can see that across most other products, it’s Africa — shown in green — where the most forest has been lost. This is true for staple crops, such as cereals and roots and tubers, as well as for cash crops, such as fruits, nuts, coffee, and cocoa beans. You can also see this clearly when looking at the continent’s annual data As I’ve written previously, countries across sub-Saharan Africa achieve very low crop yields compared to the rest of the world. As a consequence, most of the growth in food production has come from using more land, rather than using land more productively. This has come at the cost of forests. Improvements in agricultural productivity are not just essential for food security and poverty reduction, but also for preserving natural habitats.
The scale of deforestation, even today, is hard for me to wrap my head around. But a closer look at the data also reveals that the world can do something about it, and for some products, has already done so. Palm oil is a clear example: while large amounts of forest were being cut down for oil palm plantations in the 2000s and early 2010s, rates have fallen substantially over the last decade.
[The article continues here]
Also, all that soy isn't for tofu. Most soy grown is used to feed animals. Soy grown for human food is just 3.7% of all soy grown.
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| Source: Our World in Data Look how high emissions per 100 grams of protein for beef, mutton, dairy and cheese are! Emissions per 100 grams of protein are 25 times higher for beef than for tofu. |
The central Pacific exceeds 30 C for the first time ever
From Weatherzone
Sea surface temperatures in the central tropical Pacific Ocean just exceeded 30°C for the first time on record as El Niño continues to gain strength and influence weather patterns on a global scale.
El Niño became established in the Pacific Ocean in the middle of 2026 and has been rapidly gaining strength in the last few months.
Data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), published by the University of Maine, reveals that sea surface temperatures in the Niño3.4 region reached 30.06°C on October 5.
According to the NOAA OISST data published by Climate Reanlayzer, this is the first time the sea surface temperature inside the Niño3.4 region has exceeded 30°C. The previous record was 29.82°C on November 17, 2015.
The long-term average Niño3.4 temperature in early October is about 26.7°C, meaning the 30.06°C observed on October 5 was about 3.4°C above the long-term average.
Despite already breaking records, forecast models suggest that this El Niño is still a couple of months away from its peak strength.
Modelling from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) predicts a peak sometime between November and January, most likely in December. Current ECMWF guidance suggests a possible peak Niño3.4 anomaly between +3.9°C and +4.3°C. If realised, this would be around 1.5°C above the previous record from 2015, which is a colossal margin for a long-term climate record.
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