Wednesday, 1 July 2026

Sempra Infrastructure has selected Bhavesh "Bob" Patel as its incoming chief executive officer, the Houston subsidiary of Sempra said. Patel takes the post once a previously announced deal closes, under which KKR affiliates, together with Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), buy a stake in the company.

That deal, first disclosed in September 2025, sells a 45% stake in Sempra Infrastructure to the KKR affiliates alongside CPP Investments for USD 10 billion.

When the deal closes, a KKR-led consortium will control 65%, Sempra keeps 25%, and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority takes 10%.

Justin Bird stays on as chairman and chief executive officer until closing. He then moves to executive vice-president of Sempra and keeps his seat on the Sempra Infrastructure board.

Patel ran LyondellBasell as chief executive officer during 2015-21. He most recently held the president role at Standard Industries.

New York's Legislature passed a one-year moratorium on data center permits Thursday night, the latest pushback against a nationwide rush to build power-hungry facilities. If Governor Kathy Hochul signs the bill, New York would be the first state to enact such a freeze.

The pause covers any data center drawing peak energy use above 20 megawatts. Beyond that threshold, the Responsible Data Center Development Act mandates a local public hearing before construction and orders a statewide environmental impact report within a year and a half of the bill becoming law.

A similar push failed elsewhere in the region. Maine's governor vetoed a data center moratorium in April.

Inside New York, local governments moved first. Oneonta passed a 12-month moratorium on data center development last month under a measure drafted by town supervisor William Rivera.

Cost concerns have shadowed the debate. A USD 77 million subsidy for a data center near the state's border with New Jersey produced only a single permanent job, according to New York Focus, a state news outlet.

Rigzone reported that ExxonMobil is evaluating a possible acquisition of Woodside Energy Group, citing people familiar with the matter, as part of a plan to widen its liquefied natural gas (LNG) footprint and reach more Asian customers.

Woodside's American depositary receipts jumped as much as 14% in New York on Friday. The Australian producer closed valued at around AUD 59 billion (USD 42 billion) at the end of Sydney trading.

A Woodside deal would follow ExxonMobil's USD 60 billion purchase of US shale producer Pioneer Natural Resources in 2024, after which it kept scanning for further opportunities.

Woodside ranks as Australia's largest LNG exporter and is building a project on the US Gulf Coast scheduled to start up by 2029. Combining the two would give ExxonMobil more LNG export capacity as it pushes deeper into Asian gas markets.

The review coincides with a change at the top of Woodside. Liz Westcott stepped in as chief executive officer this year after Meg O'Neill left to lead BP.

Neither side has confirmed formal talks. The reporting frames ExxonMobil's work as a study of options rather than an agreed transaction, and any bid for Woodside would draw scrutiny from Australian regulators given its role in domestic gas supply and LNG exports.

Kalmar has put an Ottawa T2 EV electric terminal tractor to work on an in-road charging system at the port of Ljungby, Sweden, where the vehicle runs its shifts without ever plugging in.

Elonroad built the system around a powered rail set into the road surface. The rail feeds current up through a physical contact into Kalmar's electric terminal trucks, forklifts, and material handlers. A 200-meter electrified section has proven enough to keep the Ljungby yard moving, charging vehicles whether they are rolling or standing still.

The Swedish Energy Agency funds the joint effort between Elonroad and Kalmar.

"The ultimate goal is to offer Kalmar customers a worry-free charging solution," said Per-Erik Johansson, Technology Manager, Electrification at Kalmar.

Partners are now measuring charging efficiency and uptime on the electric road with the Kalmar terminal tractor. Once that testing wraps, the technology moves to a real port setting with pilot customers.

Terminal tractors shunt containers and trailers around ports and yards on near-continuous shifts, a duty cycle that leaves battery-electric units little idle time for plug-in charging. Feeding power from the road while the tractor works removes that constraint at the Ljungby yard.

Shell plc is preparing to launch a sale of its offshore wind farms as it moves away from renewable power to concentrate on its higher-returning fossil fuel business.

The company has retained Rothschild & Co. and PJT Partners Inc. as financial advisers on the sale, which could bring in more than USD 1 billion, people familiar with the matter said.

The divestment comes after Shell put its European onshore renewables arm on the block, along with Indian renewable power company Sprng Energy, which it acquired in 2022 for USD 1.55 billion. Shell also dropped plans to build offshore wind farms in Scotland last year.

Chief Executive Officer Wael Sawan has pushed to cut costs and shed low-returning assets since taking the helm more than three years ago.

The offshore wind sale extends Sawan's drive to offload low-returning assets across Shell's portfolio. Shell has not identified which offshore wind holdings are covered or set a timeline for binding bids.

A federal judge scrapped IRS Notice 2025-42 and revived the 5% safe harbor rule that solar developers rely on to lock federal clean energy tax credits, in a ruling handed down by a US District Court for the District of Columbia.

The case, docketed as Civil Action No. 25-4400 (CKK) and captioned Oregon Environmental Council v. Internal Revenue Service, closed off the IRS attempt to scrap the safe harbor path. It landed with less than a month left before the July 4 federal clean energy tax-credit deadline.

Created in 2018, the safe harbor rule sets the beginning of construction date that lets solar projects with longer lead times qualify for Section 45Y and 48E tax credits. Developers who spend at least 5% of project cost by that date fix their construction start for tax purposes, preserving credit eligibility even where physical work runs across several years.

Notice 2025-42 had moved to close that route, and striking it down removes the threat to projects built around the 2018 framework and pushing to beat the July 4 cutoff.

Bill Curtis, an attorney at Spencer Fane, told Electrek the outcome is "a significant victory for the industry" that gives developers claiming the credit added certainty.

Sections 45Y and 48E carry the most weight for utility-scale solar, where permitting, interconnection, and equipment orders routinely push operation years past the construction start. The order returns developers to the pre-notice rules as they prepare safe harbor filings ahead of the July 4 deadline.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright signed a Declaration of Intent with officials from Cyprus, Greece, Israel and Rice University to establish the Eastern Mediterranean Energy Center, according to the DOE.

The signatories included the Minister of Energy, Commerce, and Industry of the Republic of Cyprus, the Minister of Environment and Energy for Greece, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, and the President of Rice University.

The DOE said the agreement advances an initiative envisioned under Secretary Rubio's Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act of 2019.

The partnership will support collaboration on priorities including natural gas development, U.S. LNG infrastructure, energy transportation networks, grid reliability, critical infrastructure resilience, and emerging technologies, according to the DOE.

The United States is the largest producer of oil and natural gas and the world's largest LNG exporter, according to the DOE.

Argentina wants to sell nuclear technology abroad. Its Guidelines for the Argentine Nuclear Policy 2026 name high-value exports as the top priority for the sector, followed by energy security, homegrown technological capacity, and regional influence, according to World Nuclear News.

The blueprint landed as the country marked the 76th anniversary of the founding of the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA), World Nuclear News reported.

Reactivating domestic uranium supply sits at the core of that plan. Secretary of Nuclear Affairs Federico Ramos Napoli wrote on X the week before publication that reactivating uranium mining is a priority for the government.

Argentina has bought all its reactor fuel abroad since operations ceased in 1997 at the San Rafael Industrial Mining Complex at Sierra Pintada in Mendoza. Every kilogram powering the Atucha I, Atucha II, and Embalse reactors has been imported since that shutdown.

Sierra Pintada is the country's largest known uranium deposit, and only 20% of it was extracted across its entire production life, according to World Nuclear News. Remediation work at the site has moved forward since January as a condition for restarting output.

Argentina runs three nuclear reactors that supply about 7% of its electricity, with the first commercial unit online since 1974. Work on the CAREM25 small modular reactor has stopped under the current government, World Nuclear News reported.

The California Public Utilities Commission approved a community solar program that solar developers say cannot work, according to pv magazine.

The framework prices grid exports through the existing Renewable Market Adjusting Tariff, or ReMAT, and drops the Net Value Billing Tariff model that the solar industry had backed. It leans on USD 250 million in federal Solar for All grant money awarded to California, one-time funding rather than a durable revenue source.

"Today's vote is a doubling down on failure," said Derek Chernow, Executive Director of CLASS, who told pv magazine the CPUC had again handed the keys to the utilities.

Chernow traced the dispute to AB 2316, which the California Legislature passed four years ago with instructions to build a workable community solar and storage program. He contrasted that with results elsewhere, saying more than 20 other states have deployed market-based community solar programs that save subscribers money.

Clean energy advocates are now taking the fight to the state Senate, pressing for passage of AB 1813 to sidestep the CPUC framework and set up a financeable community solar program in statute.

Red Eléctrica has begun construction of the double-circuit 220 kV Anchuelo-Complutum transmission line in the Comunidad de Madrid, according to the company. Red Eléctrica is the Redeia subsidiary responsible for transmission and operation of the electricity system in Spain.

The company said work has started with civil engineering on seven transmission towers.

According to Red Eléctrica, the line will run through the municipalities of Anchuelo, Los Santos de la Humosa, and Alcalá de Henares, and will include both overhead and underground sections.

Red Eléctrica said its investment in the Comunidad de Madrid under the current electricity planning totals €205 million to date.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) has started transferring fuel assemblies out of the used fuel storage pool at unit 2 of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Tepco lifted the first assembly from a rack inside the pool with a remotely controlled crane and set it into a transport cask on Tuesday, the company said.

The pool holds 615 assemblies in all, of which 587 are used and 28 unused. Tepco expects to clear every one of them by the end of fiscal year 2028, which closes in March 2029. Crews finished installing the fuel handling equipment for the job in March 2026.

Unit 2's reactor melted down after it briefly lost cooling, yet the reactor building that houses the pool avoided the hydrogen explosion that struck other units. Because the building stayed intact, the pool was reachable without the debris clearance that slowed access elsewhere on the site.

Work has moved through the plant one reactor at a time. Tepco emptied all 566 assemblies from the unit 3 pool by February 2021.

Farmers for Climate Action (FCA) wants Australian farms to swap imported diesel for locally generated power and sustainable biofuels, in a report titled Energy Sovereignty for Regional Australia that calls for cheaper, lower-cost energy produced on site.

The group counts nearly 9,000 active members and a wider support base of about 80,000 people, according to pv magazine.

"The fuel supply disruption has highlighted just how vulnerable the agricultural sector is," said FCA Chief Executive Officer Verity Morgan-Schmidt.

A case study in the report compares diesel and electric seeding. It estimates a 6,000-hectare seeding program over 35 days burns about 30,000 litres of diesel, roughly 320 MWh of fuel energy. An efficient electric tractor doing the same work would draw around 110 MWh, because electric drivetrains turn more of their input into useful work.

That works out to about 3.1 MWh of electricity a day across the seeding period. The report says between 600 and 900 kW of solar PV, laid across 1 to 1.5 hectares of panels and paired with 2.5 MWh of battery storage, could cover that daily load.

FCA argues that on-farm solar, batteries, electric machinery and sustainable biofuels together can reduce farms' dependence on imported diesel supply chains. The seeding figures are presented as indicative rather than a fixed design.

CHN Energy brought its integrated solar, hydrogen and battery storage complex online on June 10, 2026, after joint commissioning confirmed each subsystem hit its design targets, pv magazine reported.

At the core sits a 400 MW coastal photovoltaic plant that reached full-capacity grid connection on April 29, 2025. Alongside it run a 60 MW/120 MWh battery and an electrolyzer facility rated at 1,500 Nm3 per hour, both tied into a 220 kV shore-based substation.

Electrolyzer and balance-of-plant systems are still in their last commissioning stage, and the company expects hydrogen output to start in August 2026.

Annual solar generation is projected at about 468 GWh, enough to cover the yearly power demand of nearly 200,000 households, according to CHN Energy. At sustained operation the hydrogen plant is designed to yield 482 tons of high-purity green hydrogen a year.

A dedicated submarine cable links the photovoltaic plant straight to the electrolyzer. During high-generation hours, that cable lets surplus solar power reach the electrolyzer without first routing through the public grid.

The 120 MWh battery gives two hours of discharge at its 60 MW rating, buffering output before it feeds the substation or the hydrogen line. Its 482-ton annual hydrogen target matches the 1,500 Nm3 per hour nameplate figure held at steady load.

More than 65% of Cyprus's potential solar output was blocked from the grid in the first five months of 2026, with curtailed volumes reaching about 162 GWh, pv magazine reported.

The share lost has climbed steeply, rising from around 12% in 2022 to 47% in 2025, according to CyprusGrid. Cyprus does not compensate investors for curtailed generation.

The curtailed fleet is mostly photovoltaic, with 12.5 MW of biogas capacity and 24 MW of wind power also tied into the distribution network, CyprusGrid told pv magazine.

Small rooftop systems have taken the heaviest hit. The grid cut a record 46,687 MWh of residential and small-scale solar generation between January and May 2026. Across the whole of last year, that segment lost 30,180 MWh, against just 1,565 MWh the year before. Summer losses were sharper still: from June to August 2025, curtailed volumes more than quadrupled versus the same months in 2024.

Andreas Procopiou, founder of CyprusGrid, attributed the record curtailments to must-run conventional units that hold grid capacity renewables could otherwise use.

A research group at the East China University of Science and Technology has traced how low-silver electrodes in heterojunction (HJT) solar cells degrade, showing that the weak point sits at the contact interface rather than in the bulk conductor line.

The experiment used a silver-coated copper paste combining core-shell particles, submicron silver powder, and an epoxy resin binder, per pv magazine. Those particles measured 2 to 4 μm across, wrapped in a silver shell of roughly 70 nm. The paste went onto n-type monocrystalline silicon wafers by screen printing, then dried at 150 C and cured at 195 C.

During thermal aging, the measurements showed contact resistivity shifting with temperature far more than line resistance did. That gap led the team to name interfacial degradation, not the metal line itself, as the main driver of electrical failure.

Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, focused ion beam-scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray diffraction pointed the researchers to silver-copper interdiffusion and defect formation at the interface as the primary cause.

Silver-coated copper pastes are one route for trimming silver use per cell in HJT production, and this work locates the reliability problem at the silver-copper boundary where interdiffusion sets in. The results appeared in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells in a paper titled "Thermal aging-induced interdiffusion and reliability degradation in low-silver electrodes for SHJ solar cells".

Alleima has opened its Tube Mill 2026 production facility in Sandviken, Sweden, reopening a steam generator tube line that had been shut for 10 years and lifting the plant's capacity by 60%.

The reopened line produces tubing for both conventional reactors and small modular reactors (SMRs). "By upgrading and reopening our tube mill, we strengthen our ability to meet the growing demand within the nuclear segment," chief executive Goran Bjorkman said.

Alleima runs research and development programs with several advanced modular reactor developers spanning helium, lead, sodium and molten salt designs.

Doosan Enerbility, NuScale Power, Rolls-Royce SMR and Westinghouse were among the companies present at the opening.

Alleima traces its nuclear tube work to 1964, and says it has since delivered tube bundles to more than 400 steam generators across more than 20 countries, plus more than 60,000,000 metres of nuclear fuel tubes to more than 100 reactors.

Red Eléctrica is building a battery storage system next to the existing Sant Antoni substation in Ibiza with a total capacity of 90 MW and 67.5 MWh, according to a company press release.

The investment in the battery system amounts to €77 million, according to Red Eléctrica. That figure is included in the list of projects eligible for funding from the European Union's NextGenerationEU Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

The company said the new infrastructure will allow Ibiza to cover 100% of its demand for much of the year, up from the current annual average of 65%.

Beatriz Corredor stated that the Sant Antoni and Menorca batteries will form the largest system of battery storage fully integrated into the transmission grid in southern Europe, and the first to be installed in Spain.

Installation of the batteries is expected to be completed in summer, according to Red Eléctrica. That will be followed by a pre-operational and testing phase before the system's final entry into service.

Chinese researchers hit 20.21% efficiency in a pseudo-planar heterojunction (PPHJ) organic solar cell, ranking it among the highest ever recorded for that structure, pv magazine reported.

The team's core move was to slot a highly crystalline polymer, D18, between the donor and acceptor layers as a buffer.

That buffer lifted performance. The resulting PM6/D18/L8-BO device converted power at 19.80%, ahead of the conventional PM6/L8-BO cell at 18.53% and a PM6:D18/L8-BO blend architecture at 19.21%.

The record 20.21% came after the group folded a non-fullerene small-molecule acceptor, BTP-eC9, into the PM6/D18/L8-BO active layer, pre-blending it with L8-BO before deposition.

The work appeared in the Chinese Journal of Polymer Science, with contributions from Jiangxi Normal University, Zhejiang University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Changzhou University, and Gannan Normal University.

Airengy and Hagag Europe will invest around EUR 55 million to build a compressed-air power plant in Romania, pv magazine reported. Both companies are listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Development will run across two phases, with a planned discharge capacity of 25 MW and storage of up to 5 GWh. The first phase carries an estimated construction cost of EUR 4.5 million and will add roughly 200 MWh of storage at the outset.

Each of the two partners will take a 40% stake through a special purpose company, leaving 20% with an unnamed third party. As part of its move into Romanian energy infrastructure, Hagag Europe will lock in usage rights for the salt caverns that host the plant.

Construction is set to start in 2027, with commercial operation targeted for early 2028, Joshua Tzvi, VP Business Development Technologies at Airengy, told ESS News.

The Romanian plant dwarfs Airengy's existing assets, which run from a 10 kW pilot in central Israel to a 250 kW plant now operating in southern Israel. The company also has a collaboration with Kistos Energy Storage in the United Kingdom and is working with natural gas storage firm SEFE in Germany to assess a large-scale site, pv magazine reported.

The New York Power Authority has opened a search for developers and delivery partners to bring at least 1 GW of advanced nuclear capacity to Upstate New York.

Alongside the developer call, the authority invited training providers to apply for nuclear workforce development funding.

NYPA is weighing two reactor options: a large-scale unit such as the AP1000, a small modular reactor such as the BWRX-300, or a combination of both.

Whichever route wins must show a credible path to generate 1+ GW and break ground before 2033, the cutoff for eligibility under the US Inflation Reduction Act Investment Tax Credit.

Developers face a June 26 deadline for the qualifications submissions, while training providers have until July 31 to file their applications.

Governor Kathy Hochul framed the two solicitations as a step toward expanding new nuclear development in the state.

Nuclear already carries a large share of the state's supply. Four reactors run by Constellation Energy account for about 21.4% of New York's electricity and 41.6% of its carbon-free electricity, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.

That fleet shrank at the start of the decade. Two pressurised water reactors at Indian Point shut down early in 2020 and 2021 under a settlement between former owner Entergy and the State of New York.

The UK crossed 2,003,000 solar installations by the end of March 2026, with total capacity at 22.1 GW, according to provisional figures from the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) cited by pv magazine.

March alone brought 27,607 new solar installations, adding 121 MW of capacity, the busiest single calendar month for installations since 2012. Large-scale projects still hold most of the generating capacity, but rooftop demand drove the installation count higher.

UK solar added 2.3 GW of deployed capacity in the twelve months to March 2026, a 11.7% increase over the period, according to pv magazine.

Utility-scale procurement climbed as well. The Contracts for Difference (CfD) auction round that closed in February 2026 secured a record 4.9 GW of solar across 157 plants.

These figures move the sector toward the government's stated goal of at least 45 GW of solar capacity by 2030. To back distributed deployment, ministers have committed GBP 15 billion (USD 20 billion) to a home energy efficiency program that includes grants and loans for millions of rooftop installations by 2030.

Smaller systems face a rule change too. The government has committed to legalizing plug-in balcony solar devices in time for summer 2026, opening a route for renters and apartment residents to add small photovoltaic units.

In the Amroha district of Uttar Pradesh, HVR Solar will build a 1.2 GW TOPCon solar cell manufacturing facility, pv magazine reported.

The Amroha plant should create more than 500 local jobs, according to the Delhi-based module maker and EPC services provider.

For the project, HVR Solar has signed memorandums of understanding with technology and equipment partners, among them Shenzhen Han's Photovoltaic Equipment Co., Gentech Technology (Huzhou), and IndyGreen Technologies.

The cell factory follows a module line further along in the company's pipeline. HVR Solar plans to commission a 1.2 GW module manufacturing facility in Sonipat, Haryana, in June 2026. That plant occupies a 6.5-acre site near Murthal and will turn out TOPCon and heterojunction (HJT) modules.

The two sites would give HVR Solar matched cell and module capacity of 1.2 GW each.

Negotiators closed the first week of the Bonn climate talks without moving the adaptation finance text, according to Rebecca Thissen of Climate Action Network International, who said there was "no progress happening in the finance rooms". She tied that stall directly to the outlook for the next Conference of the Parties (COP31).

The African Group of Negotiators asked that future text carry the COP30 commitment to triple adaptation finance, a request backed by every developing-country negotiating group, according to Climate Change News.

Developing countries and civil society representatives are coalescing around USD 120 billion a year, a figure built by tripling the earlier USD 40 billion-a-year goal set for 2025.

Adaptation finance reached USD 31.7 billion in 2024 and likely fell in 2025, according to Climate Change News, leaving delivery far short of the sum the developing bloc is demanding.

Marlene Achoki of CARE International called the USD 120 billion target a floor rather than an adequate response, citing a USD 300 billion gap between annual adaptation finance and developing countries' needs as estimated by the United Nations.

Finance was not the only pressure point. Trade reached the formal agenda for the first time, with the opening dialogue on trade under the UN climate regime held at Bonn on June 13, 2026.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) warned that building renewable energy projects with foreign investment that withholds technical know-how from developing countries does not guarantee broader economic gains and could create a new form of dependency in the name of the green transition.

Four steam generators have reached unit 4 at Turkey's Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, closing out delivery of the main reactor hall equipment for that unit.

Each generator runs about 14 metres in length and 4 metres across, built at the Atommash plant in Volgodonsk. The 340-tonne components travelled 3,000 kilometres by sea to reach the site.

Rosatom is constructing four VVER-1200 reactors at Akkuyu under a build-own-operate arrangement. Concrete for unit 4 was first poured in August 2023. Unit 1 is targeted to start feeding Turkey's grid during 2026.

Once finished, the 4800 MWe plant should cover roughly 10% of the country's electricity demand.

Turkey is also drawing up plans for small modular reactors, targeting 5 GWe of added capacity by 2050.

Microsoft is weighing an end to its round-the-clock clean energy goal, a target to supply 100 percent of its electricity use with zero-carbon power 100 percent of the time by 2030, according to Inside Climate News.

That review coincides with a gas buildout by Dominion Energy, the utility serving much of the data center load. Dominion's latest Integrated Resource Plan now calls for eight gigawatts of new natural gas capacity, up from an earlier request for six gigawatts of new gas generation tied to the surge in data center development.

Gas already anchors the utility's supply. In 2023, natural gas produced 36 percent of Dominion's electricity.

Dominion's record peak demand this past winter reached 25 gigawatts, a benchmark the new gas capacity would help serve.

Microsoft's target requires matching every hour of consumption at every facility with zero-carbon supply on the same grid, a stricter hourly standard than the annual matching used across most corporate procurement, according to Inside Climate News.

GM will build its grid-scale storage business around sodium-ion battery technology, stepping away from the lithium-ion chemistry that dominates the segment.

The carmaker joins other vehicle manufacturers in the stationary storage market, but its bet on sodium-ion sets it apart. GM said the chemistry is lower cost and safer than lithium-ion.

Sodium-ion cells swap lithium for sodium, sidestepping lithium carbonate price swings and the cobalt and nickel supply chains that shape lithium-ion economics. The chemistry carries lower energy density than lithium iron phosphate, a drawback in passenger vehicles but less binding for stationary sites where installed cost per kWh and cycle life outweigh footprint.

GM has not disclosed capacity targets, manufacturing locations, or launch dates for the storage products. Its cost and safety claims have not been independently verified against lithium iron phosphate.

Lithium iron phosphate sets the price floor for utility-scale projects, and a sodium-ion entrant will be judged against it on levelized cost of storage.

Liberia has energized its first grid-connected utility-scale solar plant, the 20 MW Mount Coffee Solar Park, built at the site of the existing 88 MW Mount Coffee Hydropower Station in Montserrado district.

Work on the plant started in October 2024, according to pv magazine.

The startup lands alongside new financing for the country's grid-connected renewables. President Boakai signed investment agreements with the World Bank worth USD 125 million, of which USD 57 million is additional funding for the Regional Emergency Solar Power Intervention Project (RESPITE), a World Bank-funded program raising grid-connected renewables capacity across West and Central African nations.

That USD 57 million tranche pays for lifting the solar facility from 20 MW to 30 MW, installing a 12 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS), and upgrading the colocated hydropower station. The Africa Solar Industry Association (AFSIA) said the BESS is due to come online by October 2027.

Siting solar and battery capacity at the hydro plant lets the operator dispatch a combined block of output at one grid node.

Utility-scale solar had been absent from Liberia's generation mix before this plant. AFSIA counts 130.9 MW of operational solar in the country, most of it commercial and industrial projects, according to its project database.

The planned 30 MW solar array plus 12 MWh BESS stays small next to the 88 MW hydropower station it shares a site with. The project sets a precedent for contracting and interconnection under RESPITE.

AFSIA expects the BESS to come online by October 2027, which will show whether the solar expansion delivers firmed output on a grid still anchored by hydro.

Austria adds a 10% subsidy bonus for solar and storage systems built with European value-added components as it opens its second 2026 photovoltaic funding round on June 17, backed by EUR 12 million, according to pv magazine.

The budget splits by system size. Smaller installations up to 10 kW and those from 10 kW to 20 kW draw EUR 2 million each, while larger commercial systems of 20 kW to 100 kW and above 100 kW take EUR 4 million each.

Fixed rates favor the smallest arrays, paying EUR 150/kW below 10 kW and easing to EUR 140/kW between 10 kW and 20 kW.

Inverters carry the clearest sign of the local-content push. The ministry said 46% of PV applications already use European-made inverters, and systems built with European value-added parts qualify for the 10% bonus on the approved subsidy.

Nearly 29,000 applications requesting EUR 135 million swamped the first 2026 call, which started at EUR 40 million before the government pulled another EUR 30 million from remaining funds. Even after the top-up, only slightly more than half won approval, according to pv magazine.

Storage now travels with almost every request. About 90% of first-round applications included a storage component.

A third call follows from October 8 to October 22, carrying EUR 8 million split at EUR 2 million for each of Categories A through D.

University of A Coruña researchers said in a study that Spain's coastline could hold between 4.45 GW and 6.48 GW of floating offshore solar, with the total depending on which maritime spatial planning rules apply. At the top of that band, offshore panels would cover 9% of the electricity Spain used in September 2025; at the bottom, 6.2%.

What sets the work apart is its method: it is the first systematic reading of Spain's offshore solar potential through the country's Maritime Spatial Planning Plans (POEM), the framework approved under Royal Decree 150/2023, and it appears in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

The team built its estimates around the Merganser floating platform from Dutch firm SolarDuck, treating each unit as 0.52 MW of capacity.

Where that capacity lands depends entirely on the planning case chosen. Tie development to the priority offshore wind zones, and the Strait of Gibraltar-Alboran Sea and the Canary Islands together absorb more than 90% of the estimated total. Apply the broader maritime planning restrictions instead, and the Mediterranean carries roughly 2.54 GW on its own, emerging as Spain's leading zone for offshore solar.

Siting panels at sea also lifts output. Seawater cooling can raise electricity generation by up to 10.2% against comparable onshore installations, prior research cited in the study found.