The Stranglehold of Fossil Fuel

The images of pain and loss in Ukraine are horrifying. Putin, a cornered rat of a man, dishing out misery and death upon innocent human beings trying to live their lives. For what reason? For his ego alone.

What’s equally heartbreaking for me watching the sheer scale of armoury on the news is the realisation that we’re the ones paying for his guns. For most Europeans, when you switch your lights on, drive your car, heat your home, you are funding Putin’s war machine. Last year Europeans took $100bn of their hard earned money and gave it to Putin to build out his army, in exchange for his oil and gas. As since the tanks rolled in, the price went up, and so the rat gets even more fat. By my maths we’re now buying over half a billion dollars of Russian gas and oil every day.

We have to get off oil and gas. Has anything ever been more obvious? We’re collapsing our environment, overpaying for energy, and funding the worst regimes on the planet.

We have to do this at full 100% scale and accelerate solar right now. Over the next two decades we can 100% electrify our homes and cars and power them with solar and a bit of wind. It’s the lowest cost, cleanest and now – more evidently than ever – the safest way to power our lives.

And it isn’t going to be done by the oil majors or the politicians. Existing technologies will delivered by solar professionals educating customers, to help them make rational decisions. Simple. We simply need to scale up what we’re doing, leveraging the best talent in the energy sector (and the most accurate and fastest design and sales software!) to profitably grow and deliver that global impact from the ground up, one roof at a time.

Big love going out to the people of Ukraine and all my fellow solar entrepreneurs helping the transition to an electric world powered by sunshine. Let’s make it happen!

Fight autocracy with democracy. Fight centralised power with distributed power. Fight oil and gas with solar and wind. Fight complacency with action.