Friday, 17 July 2026

Aesen and Topline Group have set up a joint venture, Aesen Topline Offshore Corp., to run offshore logistics, maritime support and project management work in the Philippines, according to World Oil. The company will serve offshore energy jobs, marine construction and infrastructure builds.

Aesen group chief executive Darren Ang described the Philippines as a leading regional growth market for offshore energy and marine infrastructure, according to World Oil.

The two partners said they expect rising investment in offshore energy, port infrastructure and coastal developments to lift long-term demand for marine support services in the country.

TotalEnergies SE said Thursday it had divested its European portfolio of distributed solar power, giving up about 170 MW of capacity drawn mainly from rooftop installations, according to Rigzone.

The assets went to Amarenco and AMPYR Distributed Energy, Rigzone reported. They sit across Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom.

TotalEnergies said the sale is part of efforts to refocus its renewable development on large utility-scale solar and wind farms to benefit from economies of scale, according to Rigzone.

The company installed 8 GW of gross renewable capacity in the last twelve months, reaching 35 GW of gross capacity at end-March 2026, Rigzone reported. TotalEnergies aims to maintain that annual pace through 2030 to reach more than 75 GW.

AMPYR Distributed Energy said in its own announcement it had acquired 70 MW of the assets, spread across 17 sites in Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the UK and the Iberian Peninsula, according to Rigzone. The purchase lifted AMPYR Distributed Energy's contracted capacity to 250 MW.

Wood Mackenzie warned that a falling global fertility rate threatens long-term energy demand, projecting that global primary energy consumption will peak at 717 exajoules in 2035 before declining to 672 EJ by 2060, according to Rigzone.

The global fertility rate fell to 2.2 births per woman in 2025, close to the 2.1 replacement ratio needed to keep the population stable, Wood Mackenzie said. Its energy outlook has consumption rising eight percent from current levels to the 2035 peak, then easing over the following decades.

Electricity tells a different story within that trajectory. Wood Mackenzie projected electricity consumption will double to 71 petawatt-hours over the same period.

The demand picture rests on competing population paths. Wood Mackenzie said the UN currently projects global population will rise from 8.2 billion in 2025 to 10.0 billion in 2060. A low birth rate scenario in the UN's World Population Prospects 2024 report placed peak global population at 8.9 billion in 2053, falling to 7.0 billion in 2100.

Peter Martin, Head of Economics at Wood Mackenzie, pointed to China as evidence the slowdown is already outrunning forecasts. The country's fertility rate has fallen from 2.6 births per woman in 2007 to 2.2 today, and its population is already 9.6 million below the UN's 2024 forecast, Martin said.

United Solar has completed the $1.6 billion funding for its polysilicon factory in Oman's Sohar Free Zone, closing a $50 million equity investment from the International Finance Corporation, according to pv magazine.

The financing package includes $400 million in debt and working capital facilities from banks across the Middle East region, pv magazine reported. Oman's sovereign wealth fund, the Oman Investment Authority, contributed a $260 million investment.

The factory began operations earlier this year following a 22-month construction period, according to pv magazine. United Solar expects the plant to reach full capacity of 100,000 metric tonnes per year by the end of 2026, enough to meet demand for around 40 GW of PV modules.

The facility was built to serve demand for more diverse sources of polysilicon, pv magazine reported. Production of the material is highly concentrated in China and has been subject to concerns over forced labor in the Xinjiang region, which has led to import restrictions from the United States and Europe.

Market observers expect an announcement on the U.S. Section 232 polysilicon investigation, and resulting policy changes, to be made in August, according to pv magazine.