Dubai is a Distraction

It feels like the bleak midwinter. But be of good cheer. The real work is carrying on regardless.

Welcome back to Wicked Problems. The show and newsletter that wants to remind you that climate tech isn’t just for COPmas — it’s for life.

Far away from Dubai’s deadlocked, sleep-deprived delegates, even further flung than Graham Stuart’s flight from collapsing COP negotiations and winging his way to Westminster, a small team of engineers last night fitted a 92-metre-wide set of blades to a steel tower rising 70 metres above the Ayrshire hills.

And with that, Sarah Merrick’s Ripple Energy completed its eighth turbine on the site and with it their Kirk Hill wind farm. In less than 10 minutes the project will produce enough electricity to power a UK home for a year. Backed by 5,600 individual subscribers who put in as little as £25 to get it built, it’s an 18.8 MW contribution that’s easier to understand than the 3xRenewables target by 2030 to 11 Terra…