Tuesday, 7 July 2026

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted Pacific Gas and Electric Company a 20-year license renewal to keep running Diablo Canyon Power Plant. It was the 100th operating license the NRC has renewed for a U.S. power plant.

Regulators found the plant safe and environmentally sound to run for another two decades, according to Power Engineering. Running the reactors past 2030 still needs the California Legislature to act.

The plant produces more than 2,200 MW and ranks as California's largest source of clean energy, according to Power Engineering.

Earlier federal money set the plant on this path. The Biden administration finalized a USD 1.1 billion aid package at the start of 2024 to keep Diablo Canyon generating to at least 2030, according to Power Engineering.

The NRC decision hands PG&E a federal license good for 20 years, yet state law still limits operations to 2030. Lawmakers in the state capital would have to vote again before the utility could run the twin-unit plant through the full federal term.

At more than 2,200 MW, the plant supplies the single largest amount of low-carbon capacity on the state grid, so a 2030 shutdown would leave that output to be replaced from other sources.

Brookfield and The Nuclear Company (TNC) will form a new company to develop Westinghouse nuclear reactor technology, Power Engineering reported.

The venture pairs Brookfield, a global investment firm, with TNC, a nuclear project development and delivery company, to specialize in building out Westinghouse reactor designs.

TNC first laid out its ambitions in 2024, when it came out of stealth mode with a plan to develop a 6 GW nuclear fleet by the mid-2030s.

The new partnership builds on that pipeline. In June 2025, Palantir Technologies and TNC announced a strategic partnership to launch an AI-powered software platform to modernize nuclear plant construction across the nation.

The 6 GW target would rank among the larger private nuclear build programs disclosed in the country, and the Westinghouse venture gives TNC a reactor line to anchor it.

Blue Energy and GE Vernova will jointly develop a 2.5 GW plant that pairs natural gas turbines with nuclear reactors, in what Power Engineering describes as the first gas-plus-nuclear project. Blue Energy builds prefabricated nuclear power plants.

The reactor at the core of the design is GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy's BWRX-300 small modular reactor (SMR), slated for Blue Energy's first site in Texas. A final investment decision is set for 2027.

Gas comes first. Under a slot reservation agreement, GE Vernova will deliver two 7HA.02 gas turbines in 2029 to energize the site early. Those turbines should supply roughly 1 GW as early as 2030. Once the BWRX-300s come online, the developers plan to switch the steam supply and lift output to about 1.5 GW of nuclear power as early as 2032.

Blue Energy says the staged sequence can bring time to power to 48 months or less, running turbines on a natural gas bridge that later converts to nuclear.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has signed off on Blue Energy's plan to resequence the major phases of plant construction, clearing the way for large-module and gas-to-nuclear delivery schedules.

"Together with our customers, GE Vernova currently generates nearly 50 percent of electricity produced in the U.S. today," said Scott Strazik, chief executive of GE Vernova.

The gas-first approach addresses long SMR construction timelines by locking in generation revenue from a site before reactor start-up.

Ontario ordered the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) to sign a cost-sharing and recovery agreement with Bruce Power to fund pre-development work on the proposed Bruce C Nuclear Project.

The deal is set to cover about C$300 million, roughly USD 220 million, in early-stage work the province says could finish by 2030. That work spans community engagement, workforce planning, pre-construction planning, and site preparation.

Bruce Power has not chosen a reactor design. The company said it is running a technology-neutral process to weigh multiple reactor options before a final pick.

Bruce Power entered the federal Impact Assessment process in 2024, an early step in approving large-scale nuclear projects in Canada, and expects that review to close in 2028.

The directive follows a rising provincial demand forecast. The IESO's 2026 Annual Planning Outlook projected baseline electricity demand growth of 65% by 2050, and up to 92% under a high-demand scenario.

Nuclear already supplies more than half of Ontario's electricity. Bruce Power runs Bruce A and Bruce B, which together hold eight CANDU reactors.

GE Vernova has agreed to buy Robotech Automation, a robotics and automation systems integrator based near Montreal, in a deal to speed up its own robotics work. The company did not disclose financial terms, and it expects the purchase to close early in the third quarter of 2026, subject to closing conditions.

Robotech is privately held and employs about 35 people, building custom automation through in-house design and engineering backed by outside manufacturing partners. The two firms already run active projects inside GE Vernova's supply chain, including at its factories in Schenectady, New York and Charleroi, Pennsylvania.

Scott Strazik, chief executive of GE Vernova, called the purchase "a focused, strategic step to add key talent, accelerate our organic programs" and build robotics deployment capability at the company's Advanced Research Center.

GE Vernova employs more than 2,400 people across six manufacturing and office sites in Canada, where its technologies help generate about 43% of the country's electricity. Its Canadian work runs across power generation, transmission, conversion, storage, and grid orchestration, and includes building what the company calls the Western world's first Small Modular Reactor with Ontario Power Generation in Toronto.

At roughly 35 staff, Robotech brings expertise rather than scale. The purchase turns a supplier already embedded at the Schenectady and Charleroi plants into an in-house automation team.

The U.S. Department of Energy selected eight companies to support near-term deployment of advanced light-water small modular reactors (SMRs) in the United States, Neutron Bytes reported. Together the firms will draw more than $94 million in Federal cost-shared funding aimed at three bottlenecks holding back Gen III+ SMRs: licensing, supply chain, and site preparation.

The biggest single share, $27,864,860, went to Nebraska Public Power District, which will use it to obtain a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved Early Site Permit for a location in Nebraska for future Gen III+ SMRs.

A parallel siting effort landed at Constellation SMR Development, awarded $17,264,292 to pursue an approved Early Site Permit for a location in New York.

Two awards target manufacturing rather than permitting. Scot Forge Company received $12,267,000 to procure and install a large vertical turning lathe and gantry style milling machine at a Spring Grove, Illinois facility, enabling domestic production of large Gen III+ SMR components.

Framatome U.S. Government Solutions won $8,800,000 to expand a fuel fabrication facility in Richland, Washington, adding roughly 200 metric tons of uranium of annual capacity through more ceramic pellet production lines.

The US Department of Energy has signed off on the Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis for Oklo's Aurora powerhouse, a reactor slated for construction at Idaho National Laboratory, according to World Nuclear News.

The review examined the preliminary safety basis for the plant, which Oklo has designated Aurora-INL and lined up as the first in its planned fleet of fast fission reactors, World Nuclear News reported.

"This approval represents an important milestone for Aurora-INL and helps establish a foundation for future Aurora deployments," said Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte.

The Aurora reactor draws on the operating record of the Experimental Breeder Reactor II, a metallic-fuel unit that generated electricity and usable heat in Idaho from 1964 to 1994, according to World Nuclear News.

Oklo broke ground on Aurora-INL in September 2025.

Crews have set a 120-tonne core catcher into place for the third VVER-1200 reactor unit at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, World Nuclear News reported.

Teams from construction firm Titan-2 Holding directed the lowering of the device into the concrete shaft of the reactor containment building, the third unit in the plant's second phase.

That shaft now holds equipment weighing close to 900 tonnes and stands 55% complete, according to Titan-2's Konstantin Khudyakov.

The plant carries an installed capacity of 4,400 MWe.

First concrete for unit 7 was poured in March 2024, opening the main construction phase, per World Nuclear News. Unit 8 reached the same milestone in March 2025.

Two ship classification societies have signed off on conceptual designs for cargo vessels powered by nuclear reactors, according to World Nuclear News. Lloyd's Register cleared a car carrier built around a molten salt reactor, granting approval in principle for the concept.

Separately, the American Bureau of Shipping approved in principle the plan to build a nuclear reactor into a cargo vessel's propulsion system. That approval came through the MIT Maritime Consortium, whose founding members include the American Bureau of Shipping, HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (HD KSOE) and Capital Maritime Group, and it is the first approval in principle to pass through the consortium.

The reactor concept behind the American Bureau of Shipping approval, developed at MIT, circulates a synthetic fluid to move heat away from the reactor core. Because it runs at near-atmospheric pressure, the vessels can be thinner and lighter.

Lloyd's Register said it is running a joint development project with Hyundai Heavy Industries, HD KSOE, Hyundai Glovis, G-Marine Service and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI), studying an advanced small modular reactor (SMR) installed on a pure car and truck carrier.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has cleared Xcimer Energy's preconceptual design and technology development roadmap milestone for Athena, the company's fusion power plant architecture, according to power-eng.com.

The green light came after Xcimer met earlier targets during the program's first 18-month budget period, power-eng.com reported.

Xcimer plans for Athena to operate continuously at a repetition rate reaching 1 Hz, using a liquid wall chamber to shield solid structures from fusion reaction emissions across the plant's lifetime, according to power-eng.com.

The company's Phoenix prototype sits in a 74,000-square-foot Denver laser facility, power-eng.com reported. Phoenix runs on a krypton fluoride (KrF) excimer laser paired with Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS), compressing a microsecond-long pulse down to the nanosecond timescales that fusion demands.

The design draws on an earlier result at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility, where researchers reached scientific breakeven on December 5, 2022, releasing more energy from fusion than the laser energy fed in to drive it, according to power-eng.com.

China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) has set the 270-tonne outer dome of the containment building on top of unit 5 at the Ningde Nuclear Power Plant in Fujian province. With the dome in place, the HPR1000 (Hualong One) reactor moves from civil construction into equipment installation, CGN said.

Crews finished the manoeuvre at 08:02 local time after two hours and forty-five minutes of work to raise and seat the 45-metre-diameter structure.

China's State Council cleared Ningde units 5 and 6 for construction on 31 July 2023. Workers poured first concrete for the unit 5 nuclear island on 28 July 2024, with the reactor targeted to start operation in 2029.

Four CPR-1000 reactors of 1,018 MWe each already run at the site, having entered commercial operation across a window that ran from April 2013 to July 2016.

Energy Dome and the Salt River Project (SRP) have signed a deal to bring a 19 MW, 10-hour CO2-based battery system onto the Arizona grid, according to Solar Builder.

The system will sit alongside SRP's Coronado Generating Station in St. Johns. SRP will take its output under a tolling contract running 20 years.

SRP picked the project through a 2024 RFP process, with Google set to cover part of the cost under a shared-funding arrangement, Solar Builder reported. The battery is due to start operating in 2029.

SRP says it aims to at least double the number of generation resources in its power system portfolio by 2035.

PTTEP has agreed with Thailand's Departments of Fisheries and Mineral Fuels to convert decommissioned offshore wellhead platform jackets in the Gulf of Thailand into artificial reefs, Offshore magazine reported.

The Fisheries Department will receive nine repurposed jackets for marine habitat work, according to Offshore magazine. Installation of the structures in their new role is due to begin in Q4.

Engineers picked jackets whose components had never contacted liquid petroleum during production, to prevent contamination, Offshore magazine reported.

The agreement grew out of a 2022 feasibility study, according to Offshore magazine. That research brought together the Fisheries Department, PTTEP, Kasetsart University, Prince of Songkla University, and the Training Department of the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC).

Electrify America has opened an electric vehicle fast-charging station in Santa Barbara that includes a 1.9 MW battery energy storage system, according to Solar Builder.

The deployment is the company's largest public battery storage installation to date, according to Electrify America president and CEO Rob Barrosa.

The Santa Barbara site is one of four large-format Electrify America stations in California, joining locations in Santa Monica, San Diego and San Francisco, Solar Builder reported.

As of June 2026, Electrify America has pledged to invest more than USD 2 billion in Zero-Emission Vehicle infrastructure, according to Solar Builder. The company's fast-charging network currently operates in 47 U.S. states plus Washington, D.C.

Urenco is adding 4.6 million new separative work units (SWU) of uranium enrichment capacity through expansion plans spanning its facilities in the United States, the Netherlands and Germany, according to World Nuclear News.

Urenco USA's facility in New Mexico, currently the only commercial uranium enrichment capacity in the United States, is set to see its capacity increased by 2.1 million SWU, World Nuclear News reported. The extra capacity across the company's plans will come online over the next six years or so.

Urenco is one-third owned by the UK government, one-third by the Netherlands, and one-third by German utilities RWE and Eon, according to World Nuclear News.

The expansion marks a reversal from earlier planning. Laurent Odeh, Urenco's chief commercial officer, said that in 2020 the company had planned to be smaller by 2030 because of overcapacity and depressed prices in the enrichment market. Odeh said the company had been planning for as soft a landing as it could in terms of capacity.

Odeh cited the pledges signed at COP28 to at least triple global nuclear capacity by 2050 as evidence of political willingness to re-engage with nuclear. He also linked growth in electricity demand, especially in the United States, to data centres for artificial intelligence being built that need baseload power and 24/7 decarbonised electricity.

Most nuclear reactors need fuel containing between 3.5% and 5% U-235, known as low-enriched uranium (LEU), according to World Nuclear News.

Scatec has begun construction of the 120 MW Sidi Bouzid II solar plant in Tunisia after reaching financial close, according to pv magazine.

The developer is building the project alongside Aeolus SAS, part of Toyota Tsusho Group, with each party holding a 50% stake, pv magazine reported. The site is expected to reach commercial operations during the second half of 2027, according to pv magazine.

Scatec signed a power purchase agreement for the project in December 2024 following a government tender, pv magazine reported.

Senior lenders are the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank, according to pv magazine. The financing package includes grant funding from the EU Neighbourhood Investment Platform and guarantees from the European Fund for Sustainable Development Plus.

Tunisia has over 2.4 GW of operational solar, including 357 MW of utility-scale solar, according to the Africa Solar Industry Association's project database cited by pv magazine.

A dispute over adaptation finance is blocking progress on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) at the Bonn climate talks, according to Climate Home News. Governments could not agree on Wednesday night whether a new draft text should serve as a basis for negotiations.

A central task at Bonn is to agree on how to put into practice the indicators for the GGA, which governments redrafted at the end of COP30 after years of work by experts, Climate Home News reported.

The stalemate centers on finance. Developing countries are demanding that the COP30 agreement to triple adaptation finance by 2035 be referenced in the GGA agreement at Bonn, according to Climate Home News. Most developed countries oppose the move, having long wanted to keep the GGA and finance separate.

Bethan Laughlin from the Zoological Society of London said restating the tripling goal in the GGA text sends an important political signal on the widening adaptation finance gap and helps maintain pressure on developed countries to scale up their support, according to Climate Home News.

The indicators under discussion include the number of people per 100,000 covered by early warning systems and the proportion of the population vulnerable to climate change with access to mental health and psychosocial support, Climate Home News reported.

Helion received two licences from the Washington Department of Health for its Orion nuclear power plant project, according to World Nuclear News. The company says it is the first in the world to hold the regulatory approvals needed to build and operate a fusion power plant.

The two licences are the Radioactive Materials licence and the Radioactive Air Emissions licence. According to World Nuclear News, these confirm Helion has the facilities, trained personnel, and safety programmes in place at the Orion facility to meet the safety standards required for fusion operations.

The Washington Department of Health is the licensing body for fusion power in the state, following the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission's decision to regulate fusion under the byproduct material framework, alongside particle accelerators and hospitals, unlike fission reactors, which the NRC regulates itself.

Helion is also working toward a transmission interconnection agreement with Chelan County Public Utility District, which would be the first such agreement for a fusion power plant, according to World Nuclear News.

The company began construction of buildings to support the Orion fusion plant last July, on land leased from the Chelan County Public Utilities District, and construction of the assembly and office building is now complete.

Helion uses deuterium and helium-3 as fuel, and its system is built to directly recover electricity rather than heating water to turn a turbine, according to World Nuclear News.

Iran is preparing to launch its first solar project fund in the coming weeks with an initial capacity of 500 MW, according to pv magazine. The fund will let residential and commercial customers take part in solar projects by buying shares.

SATBA has set a target of training 200,000 renewable energy specialists over the next five years, pv magazine reported. Tarztalab recently unveiled 17 specialized solar energy training centres intended to speed the development of solar power plants in Iran.

Iran has set a target of reaching 12 GW of renewables capacity by the end of the year, according to pv magazine. IRNA reported earlier in June that the country's cumulative renewables capacity has surpassed 5 GW.

Equinor ASA aims to raise its production by 150,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day to 2.3 million boed within the decade, according to Rigzone.

The company has increased its outlook for Norwegian continental shelf production by 100,000 boed to 1.35 million boed by 2030, and 1.3 million boed by 2035, Rigzone reported. To support that domestic output, Equinor plans to develop 6 to 8 new tie-back projects annually towards 2035.

Outside the shelf, Equinor expects to grow its international oil and gas output by about 30 percent to 950,000 boed, according to Rigzone.

In the power sector, the company expects to increase generation fourfold to over 20 terawatt hours by 2030, mainly from ongoing projects, Rigzone reported.

Equinor pegged 2027 capital expenditure at around USD 12 billion, or about USD 10 billion when including tax credits for its Empire offshore wind project in the United States, according to Rigzone.

On shareholder returns, Equinor said it intends to double its share buyback program for 2026 to USD 3 billion. The company expects its annual return on average capital employed to exceed 15 percent from 2026 to 2030, Rigzone reported.

Peak Energy has entered a partnership with General Motors to manufacture sodium-ion batteries for energy storage systems, according to Inside Climate News, which reported the deal was announced last week.

Under the arrangement, GM will develop sodium-ion batteries at its Michigan battery lab, and Peak will be able to use them in its energy storage systems, per Inside Climate News.

Kurt Kelty, GM's vice president for battery and sustainability, said in a news release that the company believes "sodium-ion will be a defining chemistry for grid-scale energy storage systems".

Peak is based in Burlingame, California, and has about 125 employees, with a cell engineering center in Broomfield, Colorado, according to Inside Climate News. The company demonstrated its technology by completing a 3.1-megawatt-hour sodium-ion battery in the Denver area last year.

Sodium-ion remains a small share of the battery market. In China, sodium-ion's market share is 1 percent and is on track to rise to 3.4 percent by 2030, Inside Climate News reported.

The sector has seen setbacks. Natron Energy, a Peak peer, abruptly closed last year when its funding dried up, according to Inside Climate News. It had about 100 employees and operations in California and Michigan.

Wärtsilä is feeding electricity from a pure hydrogen engine directly into Spain's national grid at its Bermeo lab in Spain, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

Hydrogen Fuel News described the demonstration as the world's first of a large-scale engine running on 100% pure hydrogen.

The unit used in the demonstration is the Wärtsilä 31H2 Engine, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

Wärtsilä's company history traces back to 1834, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

Wärtsilä is participating in the H4PERION EU initiative, which focuses on hydrogen-powered shipping, as it rolls out hydrogen applications on land and at sea, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

bp has awarded DeepOcean a subsea decommissioning and recycling contract for the Foinaven field, west of Shetland, according to Offshore Magazine.

Under the scope, DeepOcean will remove 10 flexible process risers and three dynamic subsea umbilicals from the former Foinaven floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, and will retrieve a static umbilical.

Foinaven was discovered in 1992, 190 km west of the Shetland Islands in the Faroes/Shetland Trough, in water depths ranging from 330 to 530 m, according to Offshore Magazine. Between start-up in 1997 and the FPSO being taken off-station in 2021, the field produced 440 million barrels of oil.

DeepOcean said this is the second sale and purchase agreement between bp and the contractor, following earlier decommissioning work at the Don and Miller fields in the North Sea under a similar commercial model.

"We have established a robust framework that delivers greater efficiency, cost optimisation, and operational flexibility for both parties," said DeepOcean CEO Oyvind Mikaelsen.

BMW will begin production of the i3 at its Munich plant this summer, with deliveries scheduled for this fall, according to Electrek.

The i3 50 xDrive carries an EPA-estimated driving range of around 440 miles, Electrek reported. With up to 400 kW DC fast charging, the electric sedan can regain nearly 250 miles of range in about 10 minutes, according to Electrek.

Demand for BMW's electric lineup has drawn attention beyond the i3. BMW's former CEO Oliver Zipse told investors that the iX3 received over 50,000 orders in March, per Electrek.

Utility-scale solar generation in the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) rose 21% during the first five months of 2026 compared with the same period in 2024, while electricity from natural gas plants fell 60% over the same timeframe, according to Electrek.

The generation shift tracks changes in installed capacity. Between April 2024 and April 2026, utility-scale solar capacity in CAISO grew 19% to 25 GW, according to Electrek citing the EIA's Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory. Battery storage capacity rose 79% to 16 GW over the same window. Natural gas capacity stayed essentially flat at 29 GW.

CAISO began importing electricity from the SunZia wind project in New Mexico starting in April, Electrek reported.

Retirements also reshaped the fleet. CAISO retired 555 MW of generating capacity between May 2024 and May 2025, according to Electrek. That total included a 300 MW battery storage facility retired after a fire in January 2025.

The U.S. Department of Energy issued a Section 202(c) emergency order authorizing Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress to run specified units up to maximum generation output despite air quality or other permit limitations under federal, state, or local law, according to the DOE.

That order took effect at 4:00 PM ET on June 11, 2026, and expired at 10:00 PM ET on June 12, 2026, the DOE said. The department framed the action as securing the Carolinas grid ahead of a period of hot weather.

In a separate order, Energy Secretary Chris Wright directed TransAlta to keep Unit 2 of the Centralia Generating Station, a coal-fired plant in Centralia, Washington, available to operate, the DOE said. Centralia Unit 2 had been scheduled to shut down at the end of 2025.

The Centralia order runs from June 15, 2026 through September 12, 2026, according to the DOE. Citing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data, the department said Centralia generated an average of approximately 340,000 MWh per month in 2025.

Wright also issued emergency orders directing the Northern Indiana Public Service Company, CenterPoint Energy, and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator to ensure specified generation units at the R.M. Schahfer and F.B. Culley generating stations in Indiana remain available to operate, the DOE said. Those orders are in effect from June 22, 2026 through September 19, 2026.

The DOE said that in 2025 more than 17 gigawatts of coal-power electricity generation were saved from going offline.

The Province of Overijssel has received an initial siting study, prepared by Tractebel, pointing to spots where small modular reactors might be built in the Dutch province, according to World Nuclear News.

Reactors up to 100 MW could fit across wide stretches of Overijssel, the study found. Options narrow sharply for units between 100 MW and 500 MW, with candidate sites clustered along the IJssel.

To screen the terrain, Tractebel's team applied the International Atomic Energy Agency's siting criteria, weighing population density, natural risks, cultural heritage, critical infrastructure, cooling water and distance to the grid.

Provincial Executive Member Gert Harm ten Bolscher framed the work as a technical scoping exercise built on independent analysis. "No choices have been made yet," ten Bolscher said.

Nuclear power remains a small slice of Dutch supply. One pressurised water reactor at Borssele, rated 485 MWe net and run by EPZ, has operated since 1973 and covers roughly 3% of national electricity generation, World Nuclear News reported.

Preliminary plans envisage two new reactors finished around 2035, each between 1,000 and 1,650 MWe. Together they would supply 9-13% of the country's electricity in 2035.

Beacon Offshore Energy reached a total depth of 32,250 ft on the first Monument development well in Walker Ridge Block 315, logging 245 ft of net oil pay across Lower Wilcox reservoirs and matching pre-drill estimates, according to offshore-mag.

First oil at Monument is targeted before the end of 2026, offshore-mag reported. A 17-mile subsea system will connect the field to the Beacon-operated Shenandoah floating production system.

Production from the Zephyrus #2 well in Mississippi Canyon Block 759 started in late April 2026, Beacon reported.

Combined, the Zephyrus #1 and #2 wells are forecast to reach peak output above 20,000 boe/d, according to offshore-mag.

The Zephyrus wells route through Shell-operated subsea infrastructure, with processing on the Olympus platform in the Mars corridor.

Navitas Petroleum and Talos Energy hold stakes in the Monument project alongside Beacon, according to offshore-mag.

A 7,500-tonne steel jacket for the Neptun Deep gas project has sailed from Saipem's yard at Arbatax on Sardinia, headed for the Romanian waters of the Black Sea.

The structure rises roughly 135 m and sits on a base of 50 by 50 m, according to Saipem. It was built lying flat and is making the voyage in that same horizontal position.

Once on site, the Saipem 7000 crane vessel will raise the jacket upright onto the seabed and secure it with eight steel piles, each 2.5 m across.

The topside that will sit on the jacket is still being fabricated at Saipem's Karimun yard in Indonesia.

Saipem's scope runs deeper offshore too. The contractor will handle subsea work at the Domino Field, where water reaches 1,000 m, and at the shallower Pelican Field at 125 m.

Running back to shore, Saipem is installing a 160-km, 30-inch gas pipeline alongside a fiber-optic cable that links the platform to the Romanian coast.

The first coastal segment is already underway. OMV reported that the Castoro 10 vessel reached the area last month to lay that opening stretch through the microtunnel.

Sweden's Riksdag approved a government bill on 11 June that amends the country's Nuclear Activities Act, according to World Nuclear News. Under the change, uranium mines will no longer count as a nuclear facility.

That reclassification carries a practical effect for permitting. Because uranium mines fall outside the nuclear-facility rules, extraction will no longer need explicit municipal consent.

The amendments take effect on 15 July, World Nuclear News reported.

Aura Energy Executive Chairman Phil Mitchell tied the vote to an earlier legislative shift, saying the removal of the uranium mining ban in January 2026 has now been followed by the declassification of uranium mining as a nuclear facility.

Argentina's Energy Secretariat moved 232 of the 235 bids in its AlmaSADI battery storage tender into the economic evaluation stage, with three proposals rejected for failing to meet tender requirements, according to pv magazine.

Interest in the round ran far ahead of what regulators sought. The 235 submissions came from 37 domestic and international companies and totaled 8,335 MW, against a reference target of 700 MW, pv magazine reported.

Under Resolution SE 50/2026, the rule that opened the tender, participating projects must deliver at least four consecutive hours of energy from new battery energy storage systems.

The next step falls to CAMMESA, which is set to open economic bids on June 24 and hand out awards in early July under the published timetable.

Holding the 700 MW target would put total investment near USD 700 million, pv magazine reported.

Before AlmaSADI, Argentina ran its first large-scale storage procurement, AlmaGBA, awarding 713 MW of battery capacity for critical nodes across the Buenos Aires metropolitan area.

California Resources Corporation, the state's largest oil company, wants to construct a data center campus spanning 600,000 square feet inside the Elk Hills oil field, according to Grist.

The project, named the Golden Valley Technology Hub, would occupy 100 acres of the field and stand more than a mile from the nearest homes, Grist reported. Power would come from a 550-megawatt natural gas plant at the site, a unit that has for years produced steam used in drilling.

CRC attached 150 signatures from area residents backing the data center to its permit application, according to Grist. At least five of those names are tied to the local oil industry.

The carbon capture system already running at the plant takes in roughly 7 percent of its total emissions, Grist reported.

Chris Gould, CRC's chief sustainability officer, said the plan reuses an existing industrial site and relies on what the company describes as one of the industry's most water-efficient cooling systems.

Chevron has entered a similar market, signing an agreement to supply methane to a Microsoft data center in west Texas, according to Grist.

The Tennessee Valley Authority won a USD 46 million federal pledge to prolong operations at the Cumberland Fossil Plant in Tennessee, according to Inside Climate News.

A review by Inside Climate News found Cumberland among at least three of the 12 plants drawing Department of Energy grants that have faced repeated citations under the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, or both.

The authority had planned to close Cumberland's units in 2026 and 2028, according to Inside Climate News. It abandoned that timeline in February, after the Trump administration swapped out four of the authority's board members.

Rising electricity demand and shifts in the regulatory landscape drove the February reversal, said Scott Fiedler, a Tennessee Valley Authority spokesman.

A study cited by Inside Climate News estimated that toxic fine particles from Cumberland contributed to 1,000 deaths as far as New York and Massachusetts between 1999 and 2020.

The Department of Energy also committed USD 28.5 million toward a USD 76.5 million project at the Grand River Energy Center in Oklahoma, according to Inside Climate News.

Asked about the violation records at three of the funded coal plants, an Energy Department spokesperson declined to address the specifics and said Trump is committed to "reversing the American war on coal".

The United Kingdom is aiming for 24 GWe of nuclear generating capacity by 2050, a level that would cover roughly 25% of projected electricity demand, under a roadmap the government issued in January 2024, according to World Nuclear News.

That target sits against a shrinking fleet. Nuclear now supplies about 16% of UK energy, and every existing reactor bar one is scheduled to close by 2030, World Nuclear News reported.

To help fill the gap, the government named Rolls-Royce SMR in June 2025 as its preferred technology for the country's first small modular reactor project. In November it picked Wylfa on the island of Anglesey to host three Rolls-Royce SMR units, a decommissioning Magnox site that could take up to eight reactors, with a final investment decision due in 2029.

In the United States, TerraPower began building its first Natrium plant, Kemmerer unit 1 in Wyoming, in April, according to World Nuclear News.

The Natrium is a 345 MWe sodium-cooled fast reactor paired with molten-salt storage that can lift output to 500 MWe for short periods to follow daily load changes. The same design cleared entry into the UK's Generic Design Assessment process in February.

Zululand Energy Terminal (ZET) signed a preliminary agreement with ExxonMobil to supply liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the facility, which Rigzone describes as South Africa's first LNG receiving terminal.

Rigzone reported that Phase 1 calls for a floating storage unit rated at 170,000 cubic meters, paired with an onshore regasification system. That regasification capacity runs to roughly 400 million cubic feet a day, equal to 3 million metric tons per annum.

The site sits at the Port of Richards Bay, operating under a 25-year license granted in 2024, according to Rigzone.

ZET owners Vopak Terminal Durban and Transnet Pipelines are targeting a final investment decision in 2028, Rigzone reported.

ZET projects that South Africa faces a gas supply shortfall by 2030, tied to declining output from Mozambique's Pande-Temane fields.

A new US industry group, the American Battery Leadership Coalition (ABLC), has formed to promote sodium-ion batteries in domestic energy storage, according to ESS News.

Graeme Grant, chief operating officer of Alsym Energy, chairs the coalition. Edward McGlone of Peak Energy holds the vice chair role.

Developers, utilities and data center operators have signaled plans to buy more than 15 GWh of sodium-ion storage capacity, Grant said.

The push targets a market where power demand is climbing. IEA estimates put US data center electricity use at 183 TWh in 2024.

The G7 agreed at its leaders' summit in France to coordinate on securing minerals for the energy transition, artificial intelligence and defence, and to move supply chains away from China with more cooperation between what the group called "like-minded partners".

Eight signatories backed the declaration at the close of the three-day summit in Evian, on the French shores of Lake Geneva: France, the UK, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US and the European Union, according to Climate Home News. Australia, outside the G7, added its support to the text.

The group will build a joint crisis-prevention mechanism, backed by the International Energy Agency, to track disruptions in mineral supply and demand. Members also committed to harmonised platforms that trace where minerals originate, beginning with lithium and nickel.

Leaders committed to pool demand behind new minerals projects and to fix targets by the end of the year for cutting reliance on any single country outside the G7.

China dominates the processing of 19 out of 20 critical minerals the group depends on, according to Climate Home News. Nickel is the sole exception, with Indonesia leading both supply and processing.

Consensus fell short on two measures. A US proposal to regulate mineral prices and a French bid to set up a permanent secretariat tracking G7 minerals initiatives both failed to win agreement, according to Reuters.

The United States kept a federal delegation away from the recent high-level UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany, according to Inside Climate News.

UNFCCC executive secretary Simon Stiell tied the sidestepping and stalling on climate finance and other core issues to geopolitical friction, Inside Climate News reported. "We've seen geopolitical tensions washing through these halls," Stiell said.

Negotiators spent 11 days chasing funding targets for climate adaptation and pressing to put existing agreements into practice before COP31 opens in Antalya, Turkey, in November, according to Inside Climate News.

The fund meant to pay out for loss and damage from climate impacts holds only about $100 million in contributions, Inside Climate News reported.

At the closing plenary on Thursday, a Saudi Arabian delegate cast his country as a victim of climate change, pointing to extreme heat and drought, according to Inside Climate News.

Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power has chosen Yeongdeok in North Gyeongsang Province as the site for two new large-scale nuclear reactors, according to World Nuclear News.

Those two units will hold a combined 2.8 GWe, according to World Nuclear News. South Korea's 11th Basic Plan, spanning 2024 to 2038, sets a separate goal of 700 MW of small modular reactor (SMR) capacity, with both the large reactors and the SMR fleet due for completion by 2038.

Korea's National Assembly passed the Special Act on the Promotion and Support of SMR Development in February 2026, World Nuclear News reported. The law builds a framework that includes a five-year basic plan and an SMR Development Promotion Committee.

Backing the technology push, the Ministry of Science and ICT intends to spend KRW1200 billion (USD830 million) by 2030 on core technology designs for three domestically developed SMR types, according to World Nuclear News.

One of those efforts is the Innovative Small Modular Reactor (i-SMR), an integrated pressurised water reactor rated at 170 MW electrical output, according to World Nuclear News. A consortium led by KHNP and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute is behind the design.

South Korea currently runs four APR1400 units, according to World Nuclear News: Saeul units 1 and 2 alongside Shin Hanul units 1 and 2.

The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) released an interactive map detailing solar energy's place on prime farmland across the country, according to Solar Builder.

The map shows solar occupies about 0.07% of farmland nationally, a figure SEIA described as "remarkably small," Solar Builder reported.

No state has solar taking up more than 0.05% of its prime farmland, according to SEIA's map.

SEIA set the solar footprint against other land uses. New suburban developments since 2014 have used roughly six times more prime farmland than solar projects, Solar Builder reported, citing the map.

Golf courses occupy 2.6 times the amount of prime farmland that solar arrays do, according to SEIA.

The release came under new leadership at the association. Tim Pawlenty took over as SEIA president and CEO from interim president Darren Van't Hof on June 15, according to Solar Builder.

MODEC and Norway-based Eld Energy have agreed to develop a 1.2-MW offshore power system that pairs solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) with carbon capture for future zero-emission floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) units, according to Offshore Magazine.

The memorandum of understanding splits the work between the two firms. Eld Energy takes charge of design, procurement, construction and testing of the SOFC-based power unit, while MODEC handles the carbon capture system and its integration into the FPSO, Offshore Magazine reported.

The partners aim to run onshore testing around 2029, ahead of a long-term demonstration. The companies have previously scaled SOFC pilots with carbon capture from 40 kW to 120 kW since 2025, according to Offshore Magazine.

The FPSO Baobab Ivoirien resumed oil production on June 4 after a life extension and refurbishment program carried out in Dubai, Offshore Magazine reported.

The unit returned to operator CNR International on schedule, with more than 6.7 million man-hours logged without a lost time injury, according to Offshore Magazine.

MODEC sold the FPSO to CNR in February 2025 and continues to provide operations and maintenance services through December 2026.

Almost 7,000 verified owners have joined a Dutch collective claim against Tesla over Full Self-Driving promises tied to Hardware 3 cars, and the group has lined up law firm Kennedy Van der Laan to run a formal action, Electrek reported.

The HW3 Claim campaign opened in April and pulled in 3,000 signups during its opening week, according to Electrek. Dutch owners who bought the Full Self-Driving package separately paid as much as EUR 6,400, and the claim seeks a refund of that sum, Electrek reported.

The dispute hinges on which hardware regulators cleared. On April 10, 2026, the RDW approved FSD (Supervised) for HW4 hardware alone, evidence the claimants say shows the promise cannot be met on HW3, according to Electrek.

Tesla filed for FSD type approval on November 5, 2024, and set both the application scope and the test setup around HW4 hardware only, Electrek reported. The RDW put in writing on May 13, 2026 that HW3 had never been submitted for assessment, according to Electrek.

Tesla conceded the point on its Q1 2026 earnings call, when it acknowledged HW3 cannot deliver unsupervised FSD and Elon Musk pointed to memory bandwidth as the limiting factor, Electrek reported.

Antares Nuclear's Mark-0 advanced reactor completed a zero-power fueled criticality demonstration at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Idaho National Laboratory on June 4, 2026, under the DOE Reactor Pilot Program, according to the DOE.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said it was the first time in more than four decades that a new privately developed non-light-water reactor reached criticality in the United States. The DOE described the Mark-0 as the 53rd reactor built at the Idaho National Laboratory site since 1951.

The Mark-0 is the first of multiple advanced reactors the DOE anticipates going critical by the July 4th deadline set by President Trump in his May 2025 executive order.

A second reactor followed. Valar Atomics' Ward 250 completed a zero-power fueled criticality demonstration at the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab in Emery County, Utah, marking the first DOE authorized reactor built outside of a national laboratory, according to the DOE. Valar Atomics CEO Isaiah Taylor said the site was empty nine months ago and now holds a critical reactor built and operated by the Valar team.

The DOE said it established the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad to further accelerate the deployment of advanced nuclear technologies, building on the Reactor Pilot Program's success.

Oil flows out of the Strait of Hormuz could take at least six months to return to pre-conflict levels after the US-Iran ceasefire agreement, according to IEEFA.

Brent crude fell below US$80 a barrel to US$78.96, the first time it has traded at that level since early March, IEEFA said.

The strait carries a quarter of the world's seaborne oil trade and 19% of refined petroleum products, according to IEEFA.

A gradual restart is likely because damage during the conflict hit oil fields, refineries and pipelines across the Persian Gulf. More than 80 energy facilities were attacked, according to IEA executive chairman Fatih Birol.

The United Arab Emirates said full oil flows would not resume until 2027, even with an immediate end to the conflict, IEEFA said.

Liquefied natural gas supply also faces an extended outage. QatarEnergy said repairs at Ras Laffan will keep 12.8 million tonnes of LNG capacity offline for between three and five years, according to IEEFA.

IEEFA said oil and LNG should begin to flow again, but slowly.

Ukraine is adopting solar energy at a rapid pace as Russian missile strikes continue to damage its centralized power system, according to pv magazine.

Rooftop panels, batteries, and diesel generators have become part of daily survival for Ukrainian businesses, hospitals, and households dealing with chronic blackouts, pv magazine reported.

That wartime solar rush is now exposing a new problem, according to pv magazine: the grid is struggling to absorb the generation that helped keep the lights on.

Utility-scale solar deployment has accelerated in the country and is expected to feature prominently in eventual post-war recovery plans, pv magazine said.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has committed USD 95.4 million to extend the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (ACAP) research program out to 2033, according to pv magazine.

More than 250 researchers across Australia are collaborating under the ACAP umbrella to advance ultra low-cost solar, pv magazine reported.

ACAP is a consortium led by the University of New South Wales (UNSW). It includes the Australian National University (ANU), the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the University of Melbourne, Monash University, the University of Queensland, and the University of Sydney, according to pv magazine.

ARENA chief executive Darren Miller said pushing the limits of cell efficiency is necessary for Australia to reach ultra low-cost solar, according to pv magazine.

Chile has rewritten how small solar parks get paid under its distributed generation framework, the Pequeños Medios de Generación Distribuida (PMGD), according to pv magazine.

The framework covers renewable plants rated at 9 MW or less and lets them tap stabilized feed-in tariffs, pv magazine reported.

At the core of the change sits the MEP Balance, computed from the grid's real settlement resolution, which currently runs on 15-minute intervals.

Operators receive the MEP Balance each month, split pro-rata by system withdrawals, per pv magazine. Each PMGD plant then repays its share over the next year, also pro-rata, with the repayments adjusted for inflation.

The grid operator, Coordinador Eléctrico Nacional, checks compliance and runs the settlement mechanics, according to pv magazine.

Consultancy DNV weighed the outcome and found that stripping out the time value of the cash flows leaves a payment profile that tracks spot-market exposure, pv magazine reported.

European power prices are rising as a heatwave drives temperatures toward 40 C, according to pv magazine. Forecasters expect the heat to grip France, Germany, southern England and Iberia, with the hottest pockets of Spain reaching 42 C.

German week-ahead contracts have moved to roughly EUR 123.50/MWh, while certain day-ahead products near EUR 150/MWh, pv magazine reported. Spanish weekly forwards have pushed past EUR 104/MWh, up from the recent EUR 93.40/MWh average.

Cooling load is doing the work behind the price moves. Analysts consulted by Montel News put the potential demand jump at about 2 GW over levels seen earlier in the week across several markets, pv magazine reported.

Spain faces the sharpest strain. Rodrigo García, partner and operations director at consultancy Optimize Energy, estimates Spanish demand could run as much as 6 GW above seasonal norms, with daily peaks hitting 37-38 GW, according to pv magazine.

EDF has flagged possible operational limits at plants including Bugey and Saint-Alban, tied to high Rhône river temperatures, pv magazine reported. Analysts put the potential loss of output at 3-4 GW.

Tesvolt has secured building approval for a battery storage project in Wittenberg made up of 36 individual systems with a combined capacity of 60 MW and 190 MWh, according to ESS News.

The project will sit on a 20,000 square metre industrial site in Wittenberg and is designed as a merchant asset for energy trading markets, including arbitrage, ESS News reported.

According to ESS News, construction is scheduled to begin shortly, with commissioning targeted for March 2028.

The total investment volume is estimated at around EUR 35 million, according to ESS News.

Tesvolt will handle project development and construction up to the ready-to-build stage, while financing and long-term operation will be carried out by an external investor, ESS News reported.

Belenus Solar, a subsidiary of Ansasol, is building a hybrid plant in Spain's Zamora province that ties together 33 MW of solar generation, 111.8 MWh of battery storage and a 25 MW electrolyzer, ESS News reported. That electrolyzer is designed to yield as much as 445 kilograms of green hydrogen each hour.

For the storage side, the developer has specced lithium iron phosphate cells rated at 111.8 MWh of capacity, paired with 26.625 MVA of discharge power, according to ESS News.

At the Pobladura del Valle site, produced hydrogen would sit in 30 pressurized vessels holding a combined 19.5 tonnes of compressed gas.

Ansasol runs its hydrogen work under a brand called Hydron, which now counts more than 20 projects at different stages of development, ESS News reported.

Global hydrogen demand surpassed 100 million tonnes in 2025, according to the IEA as reported by pv magazine, while the agency warned that policy targets for the end of the decade are drifting beyond reach.

IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said persistent barriers, including high costs, uncertain demand, complex regulation and a lack of infrastructure, continue to slow deployment and are putting the 2030 targets set by governments increasingly out of reach, according to pv magazine.

Production of low-emissions hydrogen rose 20% year on year to almost 1 million tonnes, pv magazine reported. That advance sits against total demand above 100 million tonnes, underlining how small the low-emissions share remains.

Several project decisions moved forward as the IEA flagged the shortfall. Petrobras and Finep launched a call for proposals offering BRL 150 million (USD 30 million) in non-reimbursable funding to develop an industrial-scale electrolyzer, according to pv magazine. The funding is split equally between Finep and Petrobras, and the call requires at least 50% local content.

In Luxembourg, Enovos and its partners took a final investment decision on the Luxembourg Hydrogen Valley (LuxHyVal) project, pv magazine reported. The 5 MW electrolyzer will produce renewable hydrogen for mobility and industrial use in Luxembourg.

In Austria, Energie Steiermark will develop and operate a Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolyzer under a deal with Wolfram, according to pv magazine. The unit will have capacity of up to 750 tonnes of green hydrogen per year.

JinkoSolar achieved a power conversion efficiency of 34.82% for a perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell, according to pv magazine.

The company said the result was certified by China's Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, pv magazine reported.

The figure improves on JinkoSolar's earlier work. In previous attempts, the manufacturer reached a cell efficiency of 34.76% for the same device configuration, according to pv magazine.

The new mark trails the world record for perovskite-tandem cell efficiency. Longi holds that record at 34.85%, achieved in April 2025, pv magazine reported.

Brent crude futures climbed 51 cents, or 0.64%, to reach $80.36 a barrel by 0645 GMT on Friday, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital. U.S. West Texas Intermediate added $1.28, or 1.7%, to $77.88 a barrel, with its front-month July contract set to expire on Monday.

The intraday bounce did little for the week. Both benchmarks were on track to close down about 8% over the week, OEDigital reported.

Diplomacy over the Middle East conflict slipped. Switzerland said U.S. talks with Iranian negotiators on a pact to end the conflict would not go ahead on Friday after Vice President JD Vance dropped his travel plans.

Analysts cited by OEDigital said the U.S.-Iran deal could push more than 85 million barrels of oil currently stranded in the Middle East Gulf back into global markets.

Crude shipments have already restarted. Three Saudi-flagged tankers loaded with 6 million barrels of crude passed through the Strait of Hormuz within hours of the Iranian and U.S. presidents signing an interim deal to end their war, according to OEDigital. The outlet said roughly a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas moved through the strait before the war.

Kuwait Petroleum Corp said on Thursday it had withdrawn all force majeure notices issued during the war.

Lithium ions crossed boron nitride nanotube membranes at up to 31 times the speed that standard diffusion would predict, ESS News reported.

The finding came from a collaboration spanning Rutgers University, the University of Illinois Chicago, and Argonne National Laboratory, according to ESS News.

ESS News reported that the results were published in Nature Nanotechnology under the title "Anomalous ultrafast lithium-ion transport through boron nitride nanotube membranes".

Measured at pH 5.5, the membranes reached per-pore power densities of up to 15,300 W per square meter, with energy-conversion efficiency nearing the theoretical ceiling of 50%, ESS News reported.

In bench demonstrations, salt-solution gradients alone drove enough current to run a watch, a calculator, and LEDs, according to ESS News.

ESS News reported that the team cited two possible uses tied to the membrane result: recovering lithium from spent batteries, and blue energy generation, which draws power where salt water and fresh water meet.

OPEC expects global oil demand to climb from 105.1 million barrels a day in 2025 to 113.3 million by 2030, then to 124.1 million by 2050, according to Rigzone.

OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais put the price of meeting that demand at USD 17.7 trillion in oil investment across 2026 to 2050, which works out to more than USD 700 billion each year.

Among national markets, India leads demand growth, contributing an extra 8.1 million barrels a day between 2025 and 2050, according to Rigzone.

US tight crude, better known as shale oil, hit its high point in 2025 at just over 9 million barrels a day, OPEC said, per Rigzone.

Former International Energy Agency executive director Nobuo Tanaka told Semafor earlier this week that the current crisis is the third oil shock and a transformational moment. He said that just as the first and second oil shocks reshaped the global economy, the third marks a similar turning point.

Even with the US-Iran deal signed, Tanaka said full oil supply recovery could be two years away, according to Semafor.

On nuclear, Semafor reported that before the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Japan had 54 reactors providing 30% of its electricity, and now has 15 back online. The first reactor at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa in Niigata, the world's largest nuclear plant, entered full commercial operation in April under TEPCO, the same company that ran the stricken Fukushima plant.

Semafor also reported that only 2.5% of new car sales in Japan are electric, roughly half the rate in the United States.

On the supply side, Semafor noted the UAE's April decision to exit OPEC after 59 years of membership.

Chinese wafer output hit close to 50 GW in May and may reach about 55 GW in June, per estimates cited by pv magazine, even with soft export demand and rising inventory.

Wafer prices stayed level across the leading formats last week. FOB China M10, 210R, and G12 grades settled at USD 0.138/pc, USD 0.147/pc, and USD 0.169/pc, flat versus the prior week, according to the OPIS Global Solar Markets Report of June 13 as relayed by pv magazine.

Overseas buying has cooled in recent months, pv magazine reported, after large wafer volumes moved into bonded warehouses across India, Southeast Asia, and Africa ahead of the cancellation of China's export tax rebate on April 1.

One leading wafer maker anticipates a recovery in export demand over the second half, helped by rising domestic cell manufacturing capacity in India, according to pv magazine.

A Middle Eastern solar cell plant that started up earlier this year ran at low utilization through the first half of 2026, held back by ramp-up problems and geopolitical conflict, pv magazine reported. With tensions easing, the project aims for a much higher operating rate by the third quarter.

The green economy has surpassed $10 trillion in market value, according to a London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) report released Wednesday. The report tied that milestone to 5.3% growth in green revenue last year.

LSEG assessed 21,000 global companies and said their combined green revenue would rank as the world's third-largest industry if treated as a standalone sector.

Green companies outperformed the broader market by around 12% over the past decade, according to LSEG. The group defines green companies as those drawing at least one-fifth of their revenue from environmentally focused activities.

Since 2008, the green economy has outpaced global equities by 133%, according to LSEG's analysis.

Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School, said the green economy has grown because of fossil energy shocks, policy divergence and market volatility. Wagner said those conditions also drive greater returns on investments that make more sense in the current policy and energy-shock environment than fossil investment.

A BloombergNEF report in January projected that a record 79.7 gigawatts of clean power will come online in 2026 despite federal cancellations.

Concrete pouring has begun for the reactor shaft at what will become the eighth unit of the Leningrad nuclear power plant, according to World Nuclear News.

The reinforced concrete structure will ultimately stand 34 metres tall, World Nuclear News reported. The first stage of the reactor shaft work will require 175 tonnes of steel reinforcement and 612 cubic metres of concrete mix, according to Konstantin Khudyakov of Titan-2.

Evgeny Milushkin, deputy director at Leningrad, said installation of the reactor itself will begin in the second half of 2029. The core catcher for the unit will be delivered to the site in early July, with installation later that month, according to World Nuclear News.

First concrete was poured for the eighth unit in March 2025.

The Leningrad nuclear power plant has an installed capacity of 4,400 MWe and supplies more than 55% of the electricity demand of St Petersburg and the Leningrad region, World Nuclear News reported.

A 602 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) built by Solarpro Technology and CATL has begun feeding Bulgaria's grid at Burgas, according to ESS News.

The project lifts Bulgaria's total energy storage capacity by 10%, Solarpro Technology said in reporting by ESS News.

Solarpro describes the installation as the largest operational storage facility in Eastern Europe.

The system runs on CATL's TENER storage platform, with Solarpro handling engineering, procurement and construction and the full integration, ESS News reported.

Before Burgas, Solarpro managed a 260 MWh battery project in Tenevo that entered service in October 2025 using Hithium and Kehua batteries, according to ESS News.

K2 Pure Solutions is targeting commercial availability of hydrogen at its Pittsburg facility in Q3 2026, with PACC Services acting as the exclusive commercial partner responsible for contracting, logistics coordination, and supply chain management, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The hydrogen supplied from the site is a low-carbon byproduct of K2's existing chlor-alkali manufacturing process, according to Hydrogen Fuel News. The company says the output requires no natural gas reforming or standalone electrolysis infrastructure.

Hydrogen Fuel News reports that an agreement with Hyster-Yale represents one of the first committed offtake collaborations ahead of K2's planned commercial launch.

K2 has been commissioned since 2011, according to Hydrogen Fuel News. The company is a recipient of the Chlorine Institute's Platinum Level Process Safety Performance Award, one of the recognitions for chlor-alkali producers.

Aretis Group has sold a battery storage portfolio rated 45 MW/120 MWh near Riga to Hungarian developer Futureal Energy Partners, ESS News reported.

The two-site package pairs a 15 MW/40 MWh installation at Bolderaja with a larger 30 MW/80 MWh unit at Bisuciems, according to ESS News. Both hold grid connection agreements and building permits.

Work is due to start at each location in July 2026, and Futureal is aiming for commercial operations by November 2026, per ESS News.

The purchase gives Futureal its first directly owned battery assets in the Baltic states, the company said, according to ESS News.

Earlier in 2026, Futureal offloaded Tuovila, a 125 MW battery project in Finland, to Prime Capital AG, ESS News reported.