Good evening.

Welcome to another installment of wide boundary news.

Iran and what is building there is the biggest ostensibly story this week, so I will save

that for last.

In the news, in the narrow boundary news, in some of our feeds, for the first time, wind and

solar generated more electricity than fossil fields did in the European Union, 30% versus 29%. Solar has grown 20% per year for four straight

years, and all renewables are approaching 50% of the electricity, mind you, which is around 20, 22% of all

energy. And including nuclear, the mix is 70% clean electricity, while narrow boundary clean.

So headlines abound the last couple weeks, how the energy transition is working if we only would

follow Germany's example. But the system cost tells a different story. Germany has the highest electricity prices in Europe,

and the price of industrial electricity is now running two to three times what competitors

in the U.S. and four to five times what China pays. The result is deindustrialization in real time.

BASF hasn't turned to profit in Germany in two years,

and as a result has shut multiple production lines, closed ammonia plants, and is shifting

investments to the U.S. and to China. Many other major multinationals are exiting Europe's chemical

sector entirely and closing steel

and other energy sensitive, intensive facilities.

Over 100,000 German manufacturing jobs disappeared last year, almost 1,000 manufacturing

firms filed for bankruptcy in the first half, 2025, and GDP has been negative for five consecutive

quarters.

So the wide boundary lens here illustrates why we can never evaluate things like an energy

transition by looking at the electricity mix alone.

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