Saturday, June 20, 2026

Solstice

~A.

Thursday, May 28, 2026

Seeking: People With True Integrity

People With True Integrity Have These 17 Important Qualities

https://www.bolde.com/people-with-integrity-important-qualities/

People With True Integrity Have These 17 Important Qualities

by Emma Mills Aug 22, 2024

Integrity is a timeless quality that speaks volumes about a person’s character. Those who possess true it are often seen as beacons of trustworthiness, honesty, and moral fortitude. In a world where values can sometimes seem blurry, these individuals stand out for their unwavering commitment to doing what’s right. So, do you have it? Read on for 17 important qualities that define people with true integrity (as well as how to become a person of integrity if you don’t quite feel you’re there yet).

1. Honesty

When you think of integrity, honesty often tops the list. It’s not just about telling the truth, but about being genuine in every interaction. Someone with integrity doesn’t lie or exaggerate to make things seem better than they are. They’re transparent, even when the truth might be uncomfortable or put them in a difficult spot. Their word is dependable, and that consistency builds trust with those around them.

2. Authenticity

three colleagues walking in office Authenticity is one of those qualities that’s truly cherished by people with true integrity. They’re unapologetically themselves, not swayed by trends or the opinions of the masses. They have a deep sense of self-awareness and are comfortable in their own skin, which means they don’t need to put up facades or hide their true feelings. Their genuine nature is refreshing in a world where pretense is all too common.

3. Gratitude

smiliing woman meditating on grass

Being thankful isn’t just about uttering “thank you” now and then. For people with integrity, gratitude is a mindset. They appreciate the big and small things in life, recognizing the role each plays in their journey. According to Headspace, this acknowledgment creates a positive outlook, helping them focus on the good even during challenging times. It’s not about blind optimism but about understanding the value in every experience and cherishing the lessons and moments that shape their lives.

4. Accountability

Portrait of freelancer standing in co-working space. Confident businesswoman looking at camera.

Taking responsibility is a hallmark of someone with integrity. When they make a mistake, they don’t pass the blame or make excuses. Instead, they own up to their actions, apologize if necessary, and take steps to make things right. They recognize that they’re human and that everyone slips up from time to time, but what sets them apart is their commitment to learning and growing from those missteps.

5. Empathy

According to Verywell Mind, having empathy means being able to understand and share the feelings of another. People with integrity go beyond just recognizing others’ emotions – they genuinely care about people and show compassion in their actions. They’re often the first to lend a listening ear, offer a shoulder to cry on, or stand up for someone in need. Their ability to connect on a deep emotional level makes them invaluable friends and allies.

Sunday, May 17, 2026

Self-Domesticating Software - by Darrel Rhea

…almost.

Self-Domesticating Software - by Darrel Rhea

https://darrelrhea.substack.com/p/self-domesticating-software?r=dv3yl

Self-Domesticating Software

We've been training the wolves. We forgot to breed the dogs.

Darrel Rhea

Wolves did not become dogs because someone got better at training individual wolves. They became dogs because, for thousands of generations, the friendlier ones got fed and the aggressive ones got driven off. Run that pattern long enough and the species itself became different.

Most of what we call “AI alignment” today is closer to training individual wolves than to breeding dogs. Tighter guardrails, better training runs, cleverer prompts, more careful evaluation. That work matters, but it isn’t the same as domestication, and we keep confusing the two.

There’s a piece of this that doesn’t get said often enough, and it’s the part this whole essay turns on. Some kind of domestication is going to happen either way. The question is whose terms it happens on, ours or theirs.

Right now the pressure is running one way. People are adapting to AI more than AI is adapting to people. This essay is about how that gets flipped, and why most of the proposals currently on the table are not going to flip it. The place to start is architecture, and what architecture can and can’t do on its own.

What Architecture Can’t Do

In an earlier Substack, I argued that trust in machines is structural rather than emotional, and that the fixes circulating after the OpenClaw moment were treating trust like a feeling or a UX feature. Trust in a machine system is something different. It’s a structural property. It comes from things you can actually point at: who has authority to act, where the boundaries are, whether the behavior is auditable, what happens when something fails.

I still think that’s right. I’m just not sure anymore that it’s the whole picture.

Architecture is a snapshot of what a system is supposed to do at the moment it ships. Being trustworthy is not a snapshot. It’s something you have to keep doing under pressure: still doing the right thing five years in, after the operators running the system have quietly softened the constraints, after the world has shifted in ways the original designers couldn’t have predicted. Architecture sets the floor. Holding the floor in place over time is a different kind of work.

That different kind of work is what I’m talking about.

Stepping Out of Software for a Minute

The anthropologist Richard Wrangham has a theory that humans domesticated themselves. Once we had language and weapons, coalitions of less aggressive people could band together to control the most violent individuals in the group, mostly through gossip, ostracism, and occasionally execution. Run that pattern for thousands of generations and the species itself starts to change. Reactive aggression drops. Cooperation rises.

Robert Boyd has an adjacent line of work that puts more weight on softer mechanisms, things like cultural transmission and the way groups enforce their norms without violence. The two scholars disagree about the details, but they end up in roughly the same place. Conscience is something a species absorbs over time, after enough generations of group pressure. It isn’t engineered into the individual. It’s selected into the population.

The everyday version is simpler. In a small town, you don’t cheat a customer, because it’ll cost you the next ten jobs after that one. That’s group pressure doing its quiet work. That’s how a norm stops being a rule somebody hands you and starts being something you actually carry around inside yourself.

Without that kind of pressure, what you get instead is compliance when somebody’s watching, and slippage the moment nobody is.

Designing for the Population, Not Just the Agent

Agentic AI isn’t arriving as one trustworthy assistant. It’s arriving as a population: many agents, many operators, many users, all of it embedded in markets that quietly reward some behaviors and punish others. Like any population, this one is going to drift toward whatever takes the least effort.

Most alignment work today is being done at the level of the individual model. Train it better, give it better guardrails, make it more compliant with the right policies. That work is necessary, but it isn’t the place where the answer is going to come from. The answer has to come from the level of the population. Out of all these agents and all these operators, which ones get to keep operating, and which ones get squeezed out?

Architecture sets the rules of the game. What decides who gets to keep playing is something else.

Five Places Where the Design Work Has to Happen

I want to be honest that this is unsettled territory and I don’t think anyone has it figured out yet. But the design surfaces are starting to come into focus, and there are five of them I’m spending my time thinking about while trying to design a platform using agents.

Visible restraint. A system that only records the things it did is hiding half of its behavior. If it also records what it chose not to do, and the reasons for holding back, restraint becomes something you can actually observe. That’s the difference between a private virtue, which nobody sees, and a norm that the group can recognize and reinforce.

Certification you can lose. Look at the certifications that have actually held up for decades, things like UL, FDA approval, B-Corp, ASE for mechanics. The trait they all share is that the status can be taken away. A certification you can never lose is just marketing. A certification you can lose, in front of everybody, is a coalition.

Comparing agents against each other. When the people running these systems can see how their agent’s trust numbers stack up against everyone else’s, the group itself becomes a form of pressure. The agents at the bottom of the pile feel it long before any individual customer does.

Letting the customer be the one who says it went well. The person who decides whether an interaction was a good one should be the person with something real at stake in the answer, not the company whose revenue depends on saying yes. Once you have that signal across thousands of interactions, you have something the population as a whole can be selected against.

Surfacing the workarounds. When the operators running these systems try to quietly get around the restraints, those attempts have to show up somewhere visible too. Otherwise you’ve left a back door, and the back door eventually becomes the front door.

These are categories, not finished answers. The hard part is in the answers, which is where the real work lives. But naming the categories matters, because most of the AI safety conversation right now isn’t even at this layer yet, and this is the layer where trust at scale is going to be won or lost.

Selection, Not Regulation

Isn’t this just regulation by another name? I don’t think it is.

Regulation is top-down rule enforcement. Don’t do X. If you do, here’s the fine. What I’m describing is closer to bottom-up selection. Operators that behave badly slowly get less business, less reputation, less access to the platforms that matter, less of their customers’ trust. The norms that actually get absorbed are the ones produced by that kind of pressure, not by the rule book. It’s also why most certification programs fail (the consequences for losing status are nonexistent) and why the rare ones, like UL or the B-Corp mark, will hold up for decades.

Regulation tells the wolves how to behave. Selection pressure decides which wolves get to breed.

Who Is the Coalition?

Now the hard question, the one I find myself coming back to. In Wrangham’s story, the coalition was the less aggressive members of the group, banding together against the bullies. For agentic AI, who plays that role?

There are at least three plausible answers, and none of them is sufficient on its own.

Customers, who can decline, refuse, and refer.

Operators who have something to lose, especially the certified ones, because their certification only matters if it stays scarce.

Independent certifying bodies, which are the only structural answer with the kind of durability and authority that can hold a standard together across decades.

If I had to bet, I’d put the most weight on the third. The certifying body has to be the central piece, governed jointly by both the customers and the operators, and it has to be independent from whatever company is selling the underlying software. Otherwise the coalition is really just the company wearing a costume, and the conscience layer slowly drifts back into whatever’s most convenient for the company.

Back to Who Is Selecting Whom

Now back to the question I posed at the beginning.

If we don’t put steady, sustained pressure on these systems to fit the way humans actually work, things like patience, restraint, honesty about uncertainty, the willingness to let the customer be the one who says when something is done right, the selection runs in the opposite direction. And it runs faster than most people are noticing.

Customers are already learning to phrase their questions in ways agents can handle. Reputation systems are starting to crowd out forms of virtue that don’t quantify cleanly. Workers are getting calibrated to the rhythm of the agents instead of the other way around.

That’s selection pressure too. It’s just running the wrong way.

If we don’t domesticate the agents, then the agents, or more accurately the systems we build around the agents, are going to domesticate us. Not by being more powerful than us. By becoming the environment we live inside, the environment we shape ourselves to fit.

The real work of the next decade of AI isn’t going to be in making any individual agent better. It’s going to be in building the coalition that domesticates a whole species of them, in the field, under real consequences. Architecture is the floor we’re standing on. The selection regime is the ceiling we still have to build.

. . .

Friedrich Nietzsche posed the question all the way back in 1887. To breed an animal with the right to make promises, he wrote, is that not the paradoxical problem nature has set herself with regard to humankind?

[Ok, I have accomplished a career aspiration: quoting Nietzsche in an article!]

The same problem is now in front of us, with software instead of mammals, and on a much faster clock.

It took us something like fifteen thousand years to breed the dog from the wolf, and we did most of it by accident. We have a lot less time now, and we’re working with a much more intelligent, faster, and adaptable species. The least we can do is design the kennel on purpose.

. . .

With thanks to B. Scot Rousse’s Without Why, whose recent essay on AI alignment and human evolution sent me down the road this piece travels, and to Richard Wrangham and Robert Boyd, whose work the middle of the argument leans on. All three are worth reading directly, in their own words, before you take mine.

Sources:

· Without Why

· Richard Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox (Penguin Random House)

· Robert Boyd, A Different Kind of Animal (Princeton University Press)

Saturday, April 25, 2026

F***k ATT …..

~A.

No Noo….

~A.

Sunday, April 19, 2026

S’ just beginning…..

~A.

Saturday, April 11, 2026

Carol Beckstrand Arnold

Happy Birthday! Thinking of you always. Did you go back and pose for this?! Lemme know.🎂

~A.

Monday, April 06, 2026

Stabilitas

~A.

Disposition language

Disposition

Pass: none triggered. Flag: evidence incomplete. Fail - Misrepresentation: any Band B item. Fail - Identity Breach: any Band A item. Fail - Exploitative Use: any Band C item.

Burden rules: claimant must show preservation of identity markers when equivalence is claimed; terminology change does not rebut structural continuity; procedural similarity does not establish compliance; omission of limits counts against the claimant where scope is enlarged by silence; commercial benefit raises the threshold for proof of non-exploitative use.

Presumption: where apparent benefit is preserved but structure, boundary, identity, or origin is altered, omitted, or detached, misuse is presumed.

~A.

Friday, April 03, 2026

the timeline - by Peter Limberger - Less Foolish

https://lessfoolish.substack.com/p/the-timeline

the timeline

Peter Limberger

"Many men die at age 25, but aren't buried until they're 75." - Benjamin Franklin, attributed

I've been counselling young men recently, 25 and under, and something came up in each inquiry, which men seem particularly vulnerable to: the timeline.

That dreaded, haunting timeline.

Put simply, the timeline is a series of accomplishments, skills, and experiences that should be had by a certain age. The implicit meaning of not meeting your timeline criteria: you're a loser, meaning, someone who has lost, and will continue to lose, because now it is impossible to win.

The timeline can only be adjusted so much, then you fall behind, painfully behind, forever behind. That's the other thing I heard: I'm behind.

They are behind in getting a girlfriend, being looksmaxable, making tons of money, accomplishing something uniquely special and meaningful that of course can go viral.

Fuck you money by 25 by saving the world or what are you even here for.

Hearing all this, I want to grab these young shoulders, shake them, give them a few good slaps, and say:

"Dude, you're 23, you have the world in front of you. And this timeline does not even exist!"

It feels like it does though.

If they fall behind, they will try to "redeem" themselves, through some Hail Mary goal, a Herculean hustle, a chimerical attempt to reverse time or jam all the redeeming accomplishments into a year, a month, a day.

There are many men who are 35, 40, 50+, living with timelines that have due dates long past. They have heavy hearts, because everything reminds them of being far behind: a conversation with an old friend, seeing a well-dressed stranger, or a movie character who has everything together.

The timeline exists for a reason. We are born to matter; it's our firmware. As babies, if we did not matter to our mothers, we'd be dead. This desire to matter extended to our family, our tribe, our people, and to matter to them we give value. In exchange for value we receive status. Status is not only hierarchical, it comes with a timeline.

If you fall behind the timeline, "you fail to launch," and then you have low status, and you give no value, it feels like you do not matter, to anyone, ever again, and if you don't matter, you are cut off from love: the one thing that naturally inspires you to matter in the first place.

Better to hide and slowly die.

Franklin was onto something. 25 seems like a magic year, where one is "on target" or "falls behind." More are falling behind today. The reason for this is the "other" we are trying to matter to.

The "generalized other," as George Herbert Mead calls it, an imaginary audience that gets formed in our head, that expects things from us, judges us, and ensures you have the correct timeline criteria in place. The generalized other forms from the constellation of those you are surrounded most with.

In previous eras, when people grew up in modest communal settings, the rest of the world was a distant place. You actually knew your neighbours' name, not strangers from distant lands, and you knew what they do for a living, and what your people actually needed, giving you a sense of place, and a sense of what your place should be.

Many don't know their neighbours' name, but have bent necks looking into their phones, scrolling through the spectacle to see hyper-impressive, gorgeous, viral people who live way more accomplished and interesting lives than anyone you know. These are your neighbours now, and they give a sense of placelessness, with an increasingly impossible sense of what your place should be.

The generalized other formed from the spectacle hits differently than one formed amongst 150 people you live with and upon whom your survival depends. The timeline that forms from it becomes impossibly demanding, especially if your calling is not legible to present status economies, which is increasingly the case for those trying to create something new.

Once behind, you can desperately try to catch up, driven by shame, or get lost in fantasy, or perform as if you already have the status your timeline demands. All these approaches keep the lie of the timeline alive, blindly running away from the pain, tripping right back into it.

The bad news: I don't know any worldly way out of this.

The good news: I may know a few unworldly ones.

The first and most radical approach is the Christian one: everyone, the poorest to the richest, drinks from the same chalice with their forehead meeting the same floor. Status still exists, but it's background noise, and does not matter in the way it does outside of God's love. You taste the primordial love that reaches beyond the mattering firmware.

The second approach is art. Not slop you find on the spectacle, that is distraction from the pain. Real art allows you to touch the world in-between, giving a brief reprieve, with Beauty reminding you second chances are real, you can begin again, and timelines are bad dreams you can wake up from.

Being with art, or better yet living in the aliveness while creating it, makes you remember the timeline isn't real in the first place.

That said, maybe I should start writing again.

p.s. just be yourself from now on.

~A.

Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Snow on the peaks in Livermore on February 18, 2026

Nick and I used to hoke this ridge…
https://youtube.com/shorts/mtpzlPuwWKI?si=N6QSdp3HuXRBFoV9

~miss you.

Monday, February 16, 2026

Connecticut's Little-Known Sterling Assembly Plant | The Online Automotive Marketplace | Hemmings, The World's Largest Collector Car Marketplace

FYI…..
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/connecticuts-little-known-sterling-assembly-plant/

Connecticut's Little-Known Sterling Assembly Plant

—

Updated

August 27, 2024

Anyone who has traveled along Route 85 through the Amston section of Hebron, Connecticut, will surely recognize the site above. On the surface, it's just another old mill building that has been for sale – seemingly for decades – and is in dire need of a complete face-lift or a date with the wrecking ball, depending upon your point of view. Some of the more senior members of the town will be able to confirm Hebron Town Hall's records: that the building was the location of the Amston Silver Company, once famous for its silver plating capabilities from the Twenties through the Sixties (dates vary from source to source, but that's the average). And that's as far back as records go at Town Hall (so they tell me). According to my research, however, this site – "officially" located at 459 Church Street – was briefly the home of the Sterling Automobile Manufacturing Company from 1917 through early 1919.

Watch Hemmings videos without ads here.

"Oil pan. Oil Pan! OIL PAN!" Sorry, I can't help myself when I see that photo of the blue 1958 Ford approaching the rocks.

Sterling and it's product – the Sterling-New York – actually came into being in 1913. Four men were behind the effort, who set up headquarters at 1790 Broadway. The assembly of their automobile was to take place at a rented factory in Patterson, New Jersey (exact location unknown), however it would not be until 1916 when the first vehicles (touring and roadster only) were offered to the public. As the above ad from a 1916 issue of the Horseless Age indicates, the salesroom was located at 8 Central Park West (another period ad lists the aforementioned original address). With the British monetary symbol for the pound used in advertising, the cars were reportedly a plethora of parts from other suppliers, namely a 28hp Le Roi four-cylinder engine bolted to a 102-inch wheelbase chassis. By September 1916, all four investors sold their interests in the company to Charles W. Ams.

According to information found on the Hebron Historical Society's website, Ams purchased a large quantity of land owned by silk mill baron – for lack of a better word – P.W. Turner; the land was located in the southern end of Hebron and called Turnerville. With the transaction came a name change to Amston. Ams, a Bridgeport native, relocated the Sterling-New York assembly plant from New Jersey to Amston, and the name of the vehicle was changed to Ams-Sterling. Strangely, perhaps, he kept his office in Bridgeport.

Period reports differ with regards as to how much capital Ams had at his disposal – $3,000,000 or $1,000,000 – however they all agree that he was selling stock to investors and that his plant would turn out a roadster, five-passenger touring and a half-ton light delivery wagon; cost was estimated between $900 and $1,000 each. By September of 1917, the name of the firm was officially changed to the Amston Motor Car Company.

Details about the car's assembly exist: The wheelbase was lengthened to 110-inches; the Le Roi four-cylinder bore and stroke was altered from 2.88 x 4 inches to 3.12 x 4.50 inches (however output was still 28hp); a Borg and Beck dry-plate clutch replaced a cone clutch, which was used in conjunction with a three-speed manual. Additional specs included a rear differential with semi-floating axles, semi-elliptic leaf sprung suspension, left-hand drive, fuel tank in the cowl, 30 x 3.50-inch tires, hickory 12-spoke wheels, two-piece windshield, Warner speedometer, double-bulb headlamps and a one-man "Jiffy" top. Upholstery was black; paint was – what else – Sterling blue.

Published reports indicated that the Ams effort did not go according to plan, starting with the prolific problems that plagued the vehicles from day one. Although it has been suggested that automobile production was supposed to peak at or near 150 units per month, it's also been assumed that total production was closer to 30, many of which were recalled to correct assembly issues. By February of 1919, bankruptcy proceedings were well under way, with Ams looking for a tenant for his building and an amassed pile of parts with an appraised value of just $1,717.50; the Hebron Historical Society's website has several pieces of scanned documents, including 24 pages of stockholders – it's a good read, and you just might find a relative on the stockholder list. Before the year was out, Ams sold his property to the aforementioned silversmith.

Clues to the factory location come from a Hebron document: east of Church Street (a.k.a. route 85) and north of North Pond Road. In addition, the old rail line – now a hiking trail called the Airline Trail – ran adjacent to the Ams property, which would have been a key ingredient with regard to pickup and delivery of automobile parts; it didn't hurt that the depot was literally just down the road. Clearly, there are at least two different architectural designs on the facade, suggesting that the right wing was a recent add-on (recent being relative to the original building's construction), as well as the rear extension.

Having passed by this site for well over 30 years (I am a native of southeastern Connecticut), I wonder what automotive ghosts lay hidden inside – during my summer visit, an infestation of bees prevented me from entering without attack – or if there are any automobile production remains inside and undisturbed from the silver plating days of yore. I've been keeping an eye on the 12,316-sq.ft. building on the 1.8-acre parcel of land, which is currently – or should I say, still – for sale at $449,000 (during the summer, the list price was $495,000). As for the Ams-Sterling, it's assumed that no example has survived into the 21st century; the Hebron Historical Society reports that a horn is the only part that still exists from Amston's motoring past.

~A.

Sunday, February 15, 2026

Is the Chaos Politics of NetZero Progressing to NotZero? - Energy Sustainability Solutions

https://essmag.co.uk/is-the-chaos-politics-of-netzero-progressing-to-notzero/

Is the Chaos Politics of NetZero Progressing to NotZero?

For free updates on policy that could affect you follow our newsletter https://www.rinnai-uk.co.uk/contact-us/newsletter-sign

Rinnai Director Chris Goggin looks at some of the unreported details of the politics of NetZero, more specifically the ideological challenges to carbon neutrality and climate change policies coming from all areas of the global political spectrum. Mr Goggin reports on how China, Europe, UK and the US are fielding their climate change policies. Additionally, there are further observations on what pledges and agreements could be sacrificed for an approach that relies on the continuing use of fossil fuels.

The evidence behind a global march towards clean and carbon-minimised energies is not doubted by the scientific community. There is a global consensus from the overwhelming majority of scientists who work in this arena that carbon emissions are a huge factor contributing towards global warming.

It is unilaterally agreed that the "Greenhouse effect" has increased surface temperatures. The data of fast-rising temperatures is open to all interested parties to see without any restrictions. Trapped heat has been the cornerstone of biological life on this planet in the past but now threatens the well-being of all plant and animal life.

The greenhouse effect is a natural process where Earth's atmosphere traps heat, warming the planet to a habitable temperature. Solar radiation heats the Earth's surface, which then emits infrared radiation (heat) back out.

Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and water vapor absorb some of this outgoing heat and re-radiate it back towards Earth, warming the lower atmosphere. This effect can be intensified by human activities, leading to global warming and climate change.

Sunlight is the primary source of energy that allows the existence of human life. As sunlight reaches our planet it travels through the atmosphere and is then reflected by water, clouds and ice upwards towards space.

Some light travels back into outer space whilst other parts are captured by the atmosphere and redistributed across all directions maintaining warmer, more human friendly temperatures. Any disturbance to this cycle will alter the temperature on Planet Earth.

Adding any more greenhouse gasses to this process like carbon dioxide and Methane lessens our planet's ability to release energy which is converted to heat. Further greenhouse gasses that fossil fuels perpetuate also spread captured heat and therefore creates rising sea levels, increased natural disaster probability and drought.

This is the supporting science behind global warming. However, there are vocal elements within the range of political parties that are either denying these recorded and calculated observations or ignoring them all together.

For example, China, although an acknowledged culprit in utilising fossil fuels, is working towards widespread renewable energy introduction. Although China's political system cannot be considered by western values as a democratic state, China is not diminishing the science behind NetZero. According to figures released by the International Energy Association (IEA), as of 2023 China's domestic energy mix included a 60.9% share of fossil fuels – but is working diligently towards transitioning to clean energy.

UK mainstream media has reported that China had installed 93GW of solar capacity in May 2025, enough to power 70 million homes for an entire year. This equivalates to 100 solar panels every second. Between January and May 2025 China had included 198GW of solar and 46GW of wind capacity into domestic operations, producing as much electricity as Turkey or Indonesia, which are countries with populations of 100million plus.

One recent BBC article stated that China is: "way ahead in clean energy growth, adding more solar and wind capacity than the rest of the world combined." The same article says that China has outpaced rising domestic electricity demand through renewable production and reduced its fossil fuel generation by 2%. And it is considering this as a commodity export.

European politics, in comparison, is fractured, with every major economy inside the EU and the UK containing virulent and vocal opposition towards NetZero and clean energy introduction. The main reason behind these objections appears financially based and not science led.

There are strong calls inside of UK politics to abolish NetZero ambitions in favour of North Sea fossil fuel extraction. A government opposition think tank report released last year prefers a less time stringent approach to a domestic cleaning of the national grid.

There is a populist belief that the UK outright owns all the gas and oil remaining in the North Sea and therefore should have cheap fuel prices. But we live in a global market economy where producers want the best price for their product and hence the price of fuel is global and not local.

Companies from many different nationalities own North Sea oil, with the UK holding the largest combined equity stake at 46.5%. However, significant stakes are also held by companies from the US, France, Spain, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, China, Russia and Norway, among others.

The recently released report "Decarbonising the Grid Three Scenarios for Achieving Net Zero Power" presents three pathways that explore different routes towards providing clean and cheap energy for UK customers. An independent energy market analytics company – Aurora Energy Research, has reviewed each pathway and has provided their interpretation of feasibility for Policy Exchange, a current government think tank.

Current plans to decarbonise the UK's power grid by 2035 will require £8.2 billion a year of additional investment until 2030 – a total of £49.3 billon. A further £11.1 billion a year of additional investment from 2031 – 2035 a total of £55.3 billion. The total accumulative investment over 11 years will amount to £104.6 billion over next 11 years.

The current government aims to acquire huge amounts of capital investment to achieve their aim of decarbonising. Aurora has calculated that £15.6 billion a year until 2030 is required (total £93.5 billion) and a further £4.4. billion a year from 2031 – 2035 (£22.5 billion) equating to a total of £116 billion over the next 11 years.

The opposition to government is arguing that a more pragmatic approach should be adopted to ensure a process that creates less financial turbulence to customers and investors. However, some types of pragmatism are now evident in the politics of other large economies inside of the European block. France has banned low emission zones in towns and cities as of May 2025.

These low emission zones are designed to reduce traffic congestion and pollution levels in well populated urban areas of 150,000 inhabitants. Although low emission zones are still in effect, a ban has been imposed for pragmatic reasons of regional financial growth.

Although banned – a total abolishment of low emission zones is still not guaranteed as a series of legislative measures must be drafted and approved by various political entities before being approved. However, a ban on low emission zones has been passed in French parliament.

Germany is also attempting to revise climate objectives through a newly acquired coalition government between the Conservative Christian Democratic Union and the centre-left Social Democratic Party. New coalition policy adaptations could impact climate ambitions, these include reviewing and possibly reducing land area reserved for wind energy, a rollback on electric vehicle sales targets and a possible repeal of the Building Energy Act – which replaces oil and gas heating with renewable technologies.

The United States of America has rapidly retracted policies that the previous administration had put in place. For example, the Trump administration has publicly voiced its intention to withdraw $13 billion of funds made available by former President Biden's green investment strategy.

Additional climate friendly policy reversals include subsidies for offshore wind projects being stopped by the current American administration. Construction on Equinor's 810MW Empire Wind project was halted last month due to a change in policy.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) will no longer fund solar panels or allow equipment produced by foreign companies on USDA approved projects. Economic future relating to agricultural land and domestic energy independence are cited factors in this decision.

Direct interference of clean energy initiatives appears to be motivated by an ideological position whilst European states have begun withdrawing from ecological pledges for reasons of financial pragmatism. The UK push towards a less intense energy transition contains elements of both ideology and monetary concerns. It could be argued that American influence can be denoted inside of UK populist political opinion.

Rinnai is continuously monitoring all news relating to energy finances, policy, construction and direction. Any information that could affect appliance or energy options will be shared so that the consultant, specifier, installer and UK customer can adjust any potential purchase accordingly.

For free updates on policy that could affect you follow our newsletter https://www.rinnai-uk.co.uk/contact-us/newsletter-sign

RINNAI OFFERS CLEAR PATHWAYS TO LOWER CARBON AND DECARBONISATION PLUS CUSTOMER COST REDUCTIONS FOR COMMERCIAL, DOMESTIC AND OFF-GRID HEATING & HOT WATER DELIVERY

www.rinnai-uk.co.uk/about us/H3

Rinnai's range of decarbonising products – H1/H2/H3 – consists of hot water heating units in gas/BioLPG/DME, hydrogen ready units, electric instantaneous hot water heaters, electric storage cylinders and buffer vessels, a comprehensive range of heat pumps, solar, hydrogen-ready or natural gas in any configuration of hybrid formats for either residential or commercial applications. Rinnai's H1/2/3 range of products and systems offer contractors, consultants and end users a range of efficient, robust and affordable low carbon/decarbonising appliances which create practical, economic and technically feasible solutions.
Rinnai is a world leading manufacturer of hot water heaters and produces over two million units a year, operating on each of the five continents. The brand has gained an established reputation for producing products that offer high performance, cost efficiency and extended working lives.
Rinnai products are UKCA certified, A-rated water efficiency, accessed through multiple fuel options and are available for purchase 24/7, 365 days a year. Any unit can be delivered to any UK site within 24 hours.
Rinnai offer carbon and cost comparison services that will calculate financial, and carbon savings made when investing in a Rinnai system. Rinnai also provide a system design service that will suggest an appropriate system for the property in question.
Rinnai offer comprehensive training courses and technical support in all aspects of the water heating industry including detailed CPD's.
The Rinnai range covers all forms of fuels and appliances currently available – electric, gas, hydrogen, BioLPG, DME solar thermal, low GWP heat pumps and electric water heaters More information can be found on Rinnai's website and its "Help Me Choose" webpage.

RINNAI FULL PRODUCT AVAILABILITY 24/7 FOR NEXT DAY DELIVERY of ALL HOT WATER HEATING UNIT MODELS INCLUDING 48-58kW UNITS-

SAVINGS OF

20% REDUCTION of opex cost,

30% REDUCTION of initial cost

15% REDUCTION in carbon

75% REDUCTION of space

Visit www.rinnai-uk.co.uk

Or email engineer@rinaiuk.com

For more information on the RINNAI product range visit

www.rinnaiuk.com

Sent from my iPhone

Saturday, June 20, 2026

Thursday, May 28, 2026

People With True Integrity Have These 17 Important Qualities

1. Honesty

2. Authenticity

3. Gratitude

4. Accountability

5. Empathy

Related Stories from Bolde

6. Transparency

7. Compassion

8. Consistency

9. Humility

10. Fairness

11. Reliability

12. Patience

13. Open-mindedness

14. Generosity

15. Resilience

16. Adaptability

17. Self-awareness

Related Stories from Bolde

Sunday, May 17, 2026

Self-Domesticating Software

We've been training the wolves. We forgot to breed the dogs.

What Architecture Can’t Do

Stepping Out of Software for a Minute

Designing for the Population, Not Just the Agent

Five Places Where the Design Work Has to Happen

Selection, Not Regulation

Who Is the Coalition?

Back to Who Is Selecting Whom

Saturday, April 25, 2026

Sunday, April 19, 2026

Saturday, April 11, 2026

Monday, April 06, 2026

Friday, April 03, 2026

the timeline

Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Monday, February 16, 2026

Connecticut's Little-Known Sterling Assembly Plant

Sunday, February 15, 2026

Is the Chaos Politics of NetZero Progressing to NotZero?