Have politicians made a fundamental miscalculation when it comes to the contribution of electric cars? In 6,000 of the 8,760 hours a year, more electricity from fossil-fuel power plants will be needed in addition to green electricity. Then the real CO2 emissions could be much higher than the politicians estimate, in total even twice as high.

The 11 largest banks in the EU have €532 billion of investments and loans financing everything from extraction to transportation of fossil fuels, equivalent to 95% of their total common equity tier 1 capital. A sudden drop in value of these “fossil-fuel assets” would deplete the banks’ capacity to absorb losses and might even leave them vulnerable to bankruptcy.

The central bank said bond purchases under the €1.85tn pandemic emergency purchase programme (PEPP) would continue in the three months to September. Although the economy was “gradually reopening” and inflation was expected to continue rising this year, the central bank expected price growth to fade again next year.

The rich across the globe have big ambitions for sustainable investing. More than half still believe they have to sacrifice returns to invest in a sustainable way. The results from the study come after a survey last year showed the new generation of wealthy people prioritizes financial returns over do-good strategies just as much as their parents did.

Brussels is considering classifying gas as a partially sustainable technology under its landmark green labelling system for investors who want to plough their money into sustainable finance. Many of its 27 member states are fiercely protective over their right to use sources such as gas and nuclear power as part of the transition to net zero emissions.

Gas power stations used to determine the high peak prices for electricity during midday hours. The first solar power stations benefited from these high prices. But now that solar produces enough electricity around midday, prices have dropped. Moreover, peak is now in the evening and solar faces a noticeable discount to the around-the-clock price.

The German government has agreed to pay nuclear operators 2.4 billion euros in compensation for an early nuclear shutdown. Germany had decided to decommission nuclear power plants by 2022. It is still unclear, how the taxpayers’ money will be divided between the electricity producers, such as RWE, EnBW, E.ON and Vattenfall.

A deregulated market that rewards power generation without requiring reliable capacity ready to supply power as needed naturally tilted the field in favour of intermittent solar and wind power. The knife-edge fragility of power grids in Western Europe and the UK which have imposed policies that forced rapid growth in renewable energy capacity is no surprise.

Sweden is in the green elite. Yet a cold snap provoked a political storm this winter when, in order to keep the lights on, the authorities started up a 52-year-old oil-fired power plant. A furious debate centered on the wisdom of decommissioning nuclear plants, exposing a divide over plans to rely more on wind power for everything from transport to factories.

We have targets for closing coal-fired power stations and for achieving net zero; we spend rather less time thinking about how to keep the lights on during times of stress. We invest in more intermittent forms of energy while the provision of energy storage lags well behind, resulting in several close shaves recently as the wind dropped and the sun went down.

The French electrical grid could support an electricity mix made up almost 100% of renewables in 2050. However, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the operator of the French electricity transmission network (RTE) in a recent report warn about the massive effort required to develop the technologies to achieve this.

Regional assets invested in funds with an ESG tilt hit a record €1.1tn. Investors flocked to ESG funds last year. Once a fund is marked with a sustainable investment label, it makes it more accessible to some pension funds and other big investors that are looking for that label. However, there is no global consensus on what constitutes an ESG fund.